The Battle Never Ends
by Kenchi618
Summary: Taught from a young age to fight for his village, Naruto thought he knew what combat was all about. In the chaotic world he now finds himself in it won't take long for him to find out that he has absolutely no idea. There are no heroes on the battlefield.
1. Sleeping Wide Awake

**New attempt at a story. For those of you who don't know me I am Kenchi618… for those of you that do know me, bear with me because here we go again, a new stab at something different and out of my norm. I love the Metal Gear franchise and I love the basis of the Naruto series… thus I am doing this. It is a labor of love. LOVE!**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoy and I make fans out of the readers.**

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Hideo Kojima is some sort of deity that if I laid eyes on him while he was creating the Metal Gear games I probably would have melted instantly due to the godly awesome of it, and Masashi Kishimoto… meh, we all get lucky sometimes I guess.

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><p><strong>The Battle Never Ends<strong>

**Chapter 1: Sleeping Wide Awake**

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><p>A valley near a powerful waterfall was fraught with craters, cracks, small wisps of flame. The site of a battle that to you and I would seem supernatural.<p>

A young boy with dark hair wearing a blue shirt and white shorts looked down on an unconscious boy with blonde spiky hair and three whisker-marks on each cheek. The blonde boy wore an orange jumpsuit with blue on his shoulders of the outfit. Both were utterly wracked with grievous wounds and injuries. The blonde had suffered a puncture wound in the upper left area of his chest, a miracle that his heart hadn't taken the damage. One of the dark haired boy's arms for all intents and purposes was now useless until he could get medical treatment due to the wound at his own shoulder.

He stared down at the blonde for the longest time as the rain fell and looked at his still functioning hand. It would be so easy. He could kill him right then and there and get the power that he needed to help him do battle with the man he needed to destroy… but that would make him no better than that man. He painfully contemplated his next actions for a moment longer, but eventually finally turned to walk away, 'I don't need to kill you to gain my strength. I don't need to follow in _his_ footsteps. I'll get my own power and I'll destroy my brother that way.' As he walked away, he turned over his shoulder to give one last look to his opponent, "Don't come after me Naruto. You and I have paths that are completely different. I'm an avenger."

With that he left the area, not looking over his shoulder again. By the time he got out of distance he hadn't noticed that the ground he had left his opponent on had gotten slick and muddy, nor did he notice the blonde boy slide into the river nearby as he began to be carried away by the current, the only traces of him having been there being the groove in the mud that signified his route sliding into the water and the blue headband with a metal plate on it, the insignia of a leaf scratched through.

Time passed before a lone man found himself standing in the middle of what had once been a battlefield, looking down at the headband by the river. He had silver hair and a headband identical to the one on the ground covering one of his eyes while the other one looked down solemnly. He let out a sigh from his facemask covered mouth as he kneeled down and clutched the headband tightly, "Pakkun, can you smell anything?"

A small pug at his side sniffed the air before shaking its head and speaking, "I can't smell either one Kakashi, not Naruto or Sasuke. Sasuke's trail goes on a little further before dying off and Naruto's ends right here." He looked up at the man, "You don't think Naruto-?"

Kakashi stood back up with the headband still in his hand, looking down the river with intent, "We have to keep looking. Naruto would never die that easily. We'll find him."

XxX

Slowly opening blue eyes, the memories of the battle he had just fought found their way to Naruto's mind, "Sasuke…" He muttered quietly. He felt himself floating in water and knew he was looking up at the sky, but it was hazy, keeping him from being able to see the actual sky itself. Looking to his sides he saw the banks of the shallow river he was floating in covered with trees… burning trees.

That sight jolted Naruto to attention as he jumped to his feet, splashing water all about as he did so. Looking at the water closely he thought he could see dead fish floating towards him, but when he reached out to touch one he heard an eerie voice call out, **"**_**Sad… It's so sad…"**_

Naruto suddenly snapped his head forward to see a man floating in the air. He looked to be around his fifties with slicked back silver hair that seemed to be balding. He wore a small pair of glasses on his face and seemed to be smiling at him, smile that unnerved Naruto greatly. He wore a dark turtleneck sweater and black gloves on his hands as well as boots and pants that had a camouflage pattern of dark blue, gray, and black. He wore certain packs on his person such as one attached to the belt around his waist, but on his upper left portion of his chest there was a strange tool or weapon strapped to him, "Who are you?" Naruto asked/ordered, "Where's Sasuke? Where am I?"

"_**Such an unfortunate anomaly… to take a child as young as you, as important as you were meant to be and bring you to my domain..."**_ The man said, trailing off cryptically before bowing in the air to Naruto, his smile never leaving his face as he did so, speaking in such a melancholy manner, _**"My true name is unimportant to you boy, however for the sake of your own ability to label me you may call me The Sorrow."**_

"What kind of name is that?" Naruto asked, seriously freaked out by the weird man. He wanted to leave but he didn't know where he was. He was surrounded by the flaming trees with this strange man floating in the only escape route he could see, "Tell me where I am! I can't afford to be lost right now, I need to find Sasuke and finish my fight with him!"

The Sorrow shook his head, _**"You are more lost than you realize, and your fight with your opponent has indeed ended. You are no longer among the living my child."**_

Naruto wasn't the brightest, but it didn't take a genius to understand that he was being told that he was dead, "I'm dead?" He said in disbelief, "Th-There's no way… Sasuke-."

"_**-Did not kill you."**_ The Sorrow informed him, anticipating how Naruto would finish his statement, _**"It was the fault of no one other than fate. An accident."**_ There was nothing else to say. Naruto simply stood stunned, looking around, trying to see if any of this was fake, but as he took a step towards The Sorrow he heard the water slosh and looked down. He took this time to get a closer look at the dead fish in the water and reached to grab one, only for his hand to pass through it as if it wasn't there.

Naruto stared at his hand and then at the few fish littering the river much like the one he tried to grab a hold of, "T-That was a ghost?" He asked tentatively, getting a nod from The Sorrow, and getting that confirmation just crushed his heart, "So… I really am dead." He finished solemnly. His eyes slowly panned up towards The Sorrow before he spoke again, "Are you the Shinigami?"

Still smiling, The Sorrow shook his head as he continued to float in front of Naruto, _**"I cannot say that I am. I am a part of the dearly departed much like yourself, although I am a medium between the living and the dead."**_ He gestured to the river that they were on, _**"This river is meant to show you all of the sins of battle that you have commited."**_ He said, moving out of the way of Naruto's path, getting a gulp of fear from the boy, _**"I would have said that this experience would have been meant to force you to face those whose lives you have ended as a soldier, but you are a rarity in the world of combat and strife. You have not taken any human lives."**_

Naruto shook his head rapidly, wordlessly saying that he had not killed anyone in battle before.

"_**Yet you do not seem disgusted or appalled at the concept."**_ The Sorrow added, looking over Naruto with a scrutinizing gaze, bringing up a long silence as he did such.

The silence eventually unnerved Naruto who was scared and had absolutely no clue what was happening, or what awaited him, "Since I became a ninja I've met people… people that made it seem like killing was the only thing that we were good for. That as a shinobi I was supposed to be a killing machine. I don't believe I have to do that, there's a time for killing… and I haven't found a good enough reason to resort to killing. At least that's what I think." Naruto explained as best he could, being strangely respectful of this man. For all intents and purposes this man was telling him that he was dead. What was to become of him, "…So what's going to happen to me?"

The Sorrow just stared at him for a few more moments before speaking again, _**"That is up to you."**_ He said, confusing Naruto, _**"Do you want this to be the end?"**_ Naruto rapidly shook his head and opened his mouth to shout in dispute, _**"I cannot send you back to you and yours. Just know that before you make your decision."**_

Snapping his mouth shut, Naruto thought about what The Sorrow was telling him, 'I can't go home… I can't go back to Konoha? All of my friends… the promise I made Sakura-chan… my vow to be Hokage… I can't do any of it?'

There was no need for The Sorrow to say anything to potentially influence his decision, Naruto could make his own choice. All he had the right to do in the end was help him with whatever he decided. There was something special about this boy.

Naruto's face scrunched in thought before hardening in determination, "I can't just give up and die now. Even if I can't go back home I can't quit!" He said with conviction, "I'll miss all of my friends that I made, but if there was the choice of me just dying or going to get another chance somewhere else they would want me to do that! Whatever it is that you want to do to bring me back to life go ahead and do it creepy ghost man!"

The Sorrow merely kept his smile on his face as he floated down closer to Naruto, _**"Just like in what was meant to happen in your previous life you will find much hardship. But also much like in your previous life you have the will that may shape the world. In the end it is up to you. And remember one thing."**_ He said as a single tear of blood flowed from one of his eyes, _**"I'll be watching you."**_ The Sorrow then put a single hand on Naruto's shoulder and Naruto felt like his heart jolted to an immediate stop as everything went black again.

XxX

(Interior Alaskan Wilderness – 1999)

A man with longer slicked back blonde hair wearing sunglasses currently drove a pickup truck on a dirt road. Kazuhira Miller could honestly say that he was glad that it was summer in Alaska at the moment, because having to take himself all the way to Fairbanks and back in the middle of the hellish snow that the interior of Alaska could provide didn't honestly appeal to him. Being a survival master that had worked in the past with the Green Berets, U.S. Marines, the S.A.S., and the high-tech elite black-ops unit FOXHOUND he was no stranger to intense conditions, but having retired at this point he didn't feel like traipsing through the worst of what Alaska could throw at him.

It had been six months since he retired. Choosing to do so after remotely assisting the FOXHOUND operative Solid Snake with his infiltration mission of Zanzibar Land. Ironically Snake reportedly retired after that mission as well, coincidentally to another corner of Alaska, one not as intense as the area Miller had chosen to inhabit.

Putting this in the back of his mind as he pulled up to his rather large three-story home that sat none too far from an ambient stream nearby, he stepped out of his truck and took a moment to stretch after the long drive. The man stood 5'8, and had a rather slim but muscular build to him as he wore a dark green tanktop and a darker green shade of pants with boots on his feet. Glad to be home, he walked up the front porch to his house and opened the door, "Catherine I'm home!" He shouted throughout the house.

"Dad!" He heard shouted from upstairs by his daughter in a spirited manner, "Come here I need you to see something!"

His eyes widened behind his sunglasses. He hadn't heard his daughter that excited about anything since they had moved out there. Nothing ever really happened there, the entire reason he moved them away from Los Angeles in the first place after his divorce from his wife. He walked upstairs, surprised that she wasn't in her room on the second floor but upstairs on the third floor in the loft area.

As he reached the homey looking loft he saw his young daughter sitting by a figure that seemed to be asleep in the couch she was sitting by, covered in blankets. Snapping into suspicion he quietly walked over to his daughter, making sure that he put himself between her and the boy on the couch, "What happened? Who is this boy?"

"I don't know." Catherine said. She was a small girl wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt under a black t-shirt, blonde like her father only with her hair put in a ponytail that allowed a few curly bangs to frame her face, "I found him yesterday."

"You _found_ him?" Miller asked incredulously. How do you just _find_ someone that you don't know in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness?

Catherine shrugged and looked at the boy on her couch, "Yesterday I was feeding our huskies since you were gone for a few days and I saw something orange by the stream. It was him wearing some orange tracksuit and bandanna. He looked terrible dad." She said with a worried look on her face, "I thought he was dead and then I took his pulse. He was still alive so a brought him here hoping that would help until you got here." She turned bright green eyes up to him with a hopeful look, "You can help him can't you?"

Miller frowned and rubbed his blue eyes underneath his sunglasses. How the hell did she find a kid, and what was he doing all the way out here? Come to think of it how did he wind up in the stream? He wanted the kid to wake up just so he could get those answers out of him. But what else was he going to do other than help? He didn't really have a choice, "Yeah, I'll see what I can do, but I'm no doctor and town is far away sweetheart."

"That's the thing!" Catherine said, excited to say something else about the mysterious boy, "He had a bunch of nasty wounds when I found him but when I got up this morning they weren't nearly as bad, and all of the cuts and stuff that I found on his face were gone except whatever I saw on his cheeks."

Miller then noticed that Catherine had put band-aids on his cheeks. Curious as to what they covered, he pulled them off and had to stifle a laugh. He had birthmarks on his face that were straight lines. His ten year old daughter must have thought that with all the injuries the kid had those must have been a part of them. He then took note of the boy's features and had to keep himself from kneeling down to scrutinize his appearance up close.

The boy had blonde hair and rather tan skin. He was no Alaskan born child, that was for certain. How ironic, his daughter found a weird blonde kid. He looked he was of some sort of American descent, which once again made him wonder where the hell the kid was from.

Miller ran a hand through his hair and looked at his daughter, "Well he's breathing fine, he doesn't seem to be in pain, and I can't seem to find anything wrong with him as he is. We just have to wait for him to wake up to see if we can help him anymore." He made a shooing motion, "Get on our of here. Just sitting here isn't going to make him wake up any faster. We'll know when he comes to."

Giving one last look to the blonde boy that she found by her house, Catherine got up and walked out of the loft to go back to her room. It was true that she couldn't do anything else to help the boy out, but the last two days had been more interesting than any day before they moved out there.

XxX

Naruto woke up strangely comfortable, but with a feeling of unfamiliarity with his surroundings. He looked around in the strange room that he was in, confused, but his muscles really didn't want him to get up judging by the way that they locked up when he tried sitting up. Remembering all that happened to him he let out a bitter chuckle to himself, "_Shinu koto wa hontouni kyuuin (Dying really sucks)..._" He said to himself quietly.

Trying to piece together the last series of events he remembered the final clash that he and Sasuke had and all that had followed it, or what he thought had followed it. Did all of those things really happen? Was The Sorrow real? And where the hell was he now? All this thinking was giving him a headache, "_Itai, atama ga watashi o koroshite (Ouch, my head is killing me)..._"

"You're awake." Naruto turned towards the figure of a blonde man walking up the stairs towards where he was. He was wearing sunglasses but the look on his face was one of suspicion, "Now I've got some questions to ask you, and I hope you're in good enough condition to answer them." The man said.

Naruto simply gave him a confused look, still laying on his back on the couch covered in blankets, "Um… _Watashi wa no ojisan o itte iru no wakaranai. O no watashi no ibasho shitte ka (I don't know what you're saying mister. Do you know where I am?)?_" Naruto had never heard anyone speak like that in his entire life. He definitely wasn't in the Elemental Nations anymore that much was certain for sure.

Miller raised an eyebrow at Naruto's speech… because it wasn't English, 'It sounds like the kid is speaking Japanese.' The boy looked completely un-Japanese, yet he spoke Japanese. As a matter of fact with the blonde hair and blue eyes he reminded him of himself when he was a child. With this thought in mind he switched languages to his native tongue, "_Nani no arasuka de okonatte nipponjin no kodomodesu ka (What is a Japanese child doing in Alaska)?_" He wasn't going to question whether or not the kid was from Japan. He didn't look like he was from Japan either but he was.

Japan? Alaska? He might as well have kept speaking English for all that Naruto got from that question, "_Nani?_ _Watashi wa anata ga nani o i~tsu teru no ka mo wakaranai (What? I have no idea what you're talking about.)._" Naruto replied, looking around strangely trying to take in his surroundings. Obviously he wasn't in any danger, immediate anyway, because he was pretty comfortable as he was. "_Watashi wa doko kon, anata wa watashi o oshiete kudasai (Now could you tell me where I am)?_"

Miller gave him a straightforward look as he crossed his arms over his chest, "_Amerika Gasshuukoku (The United States of America)_." He then noticed Naruto giving him a deer in the headlights look. Did this kid know _anything_? Miller sighed, "_Anata wa nani o shitte imasu ka?__Anata no namae?_ _Nani ka koto ga tasuke ni narudarou na_ _(Do you know anything? What's your name? Anything like that would help.)._" He pointed to himself, "_Watashi wa hajimemasu. Watashi no namae wa Miller Kazuhira (I'll start. My name is Kazuhira Miller.)._"

Hearing the man introduce himself, Naruto grinned and jerked a thumb at himself, "_Watashi no namae wa Uzumaki Naruto (My name is Naruto Uzumaki.)._" He then started to think of what to tell the man. Not his hometown because he remembered he wasn't in his world anymore. The guy would think he was a loon if he gave him the rundown of where he was from. Could he tell him he was a ninja? Probably not. This world probably didn't even have them and it was something Naruto didn't think would be smart to explain. He finally deduced what he could say, "_Watashi wa juusanda (I'm thirteen years old)…_" He said, thinking of what to call his occupation before he remembered what The Sorrow called him, "_…To watashi wa heishida (… And I'm a soldier)._"

At first when he saw the shock on Miller's face he assumed that he had said something wrong, "_Heishi? Anata wa yoroshiidesu ka (A soldier? Are you sure)?_" Naruto nodded to him, shocking the man, 'A child soldier, but he doesn't look anything like one. Why would he be here?' He questioned to himself before speaking again, "_Ta ni nani ka o shitte imasu ka (Do you know anything else)?_" Naruto frowned and shook his head. The boy must have lost his memory somehow. What did he know how to do? And he was only thirteen? From the white t-shirt he was wearing the boy had a pretty dense bone structure. He was pretty big.

"_Dakara nani ga okoru ka ni narudarou? (So what's going to happen)?_" Naruto asked with some trepidation. From just this conversation alone he was positive that he didn't have what it took to survive very well out there. He didn't know the first thing about where he was or how to get along. No one even spoke his language except for some place that was more than likely far away. This 'Japan' place.

Miller looked at him and let out a sigh, switching over to English so that Naruto couldn't understand him as he mused to himself, "I can't just let this kid leave… Hell I can't even drop him off in town and wish him luck. He knows his own name, how to speak Japanese, and nothing else. And he's a soldier to boot. At worst he'll just wind up getting himself killed." Noting Naruto staring at him without blinking he addressed him again, "_Sore wa ta de gaki o mitsumete bukimida (It's creepy to stare at others brat)._" Naruto blinked once in response, "Anata ga hatarakemasu ka (Can you work?)" He asked the younger blonde boy, getting a firm nod, "_Anata ga hitsuyōna manabu made anata gataga watashi to issho ni yo (Then you'll stay with me until you learn what you need)._"

Hearing that, Naruto's face brightened up and he gave the man a grin as he eagerly started thanking him. And for the umpteenth time since the kid woke up, Miller really couldn't see how this kid was any kind of soldier.

XxX

(Two Days Later)

Hearing that Naruto was going to stay with them for a bit confused Miller's daughter Catherine, but a short explanation that told her he wasn't from their country or even their continent and that he didn't seem to know anything put things in perspective for him. There was a language barrier between Naruto and Catherine, but the ten year old girl could see that he was a friendly person. Miller hadn't yet told her that Naruto was a child soldier, partially because he still didn't believe it.

A full day of putting Naruto to work changed that way of thinking however. He didn't know if the kid just had one hell of a work ethic or what, because he blazed through whatever chore was set in front of him, no matter how difficult the task would have been for a regular child his age. Cutting firewood, hauling it back to the house, feeding the huskies…etc. Whatever Miller wanted him to do he did. Eventually it just became something of a test to see just what it would take for him to complain or tire out, but he never did. He simply accomplished his task and reported directly to Miller for whatever he wanted him to do next, sometimes smiling.

As the sun set, bathing the sky orange signifying the end of the day, Miller and Naruto trudged back to the house, the boy still as chipper as ever. He didn't speak a lick of English… which would be pretty much the first major focus they got into teaching the kid in his spare time, but he could definitely see the training in him. The walk through the woods had seen Naruto alert and ready, sometimes his fingers would twitch towards nonexistent weapons on his person. Despite his bright attitude he clearly didn't trust his surroundings and was ready to react at any time in case of a threat.

It got Miller to wondering just how capable the boy was in case of a threat actually existing.

It was worth looking into, because if he had the skills there was no need to hide or squander them. Miller himself was a good soldier in his time, having worked with the man perceived to be the greatest soldier in the world in the middle of intense combat, and he had helped to train elite soldiers all over the world. If there was anyone that could judge just what Naruto was capable of it was definitely him.

As they reached the front of the large house Miller stopped and looked down at the young boy who was wearing a simple green long-sleeved shirt with 'Marines' emblazoned on the front and an olive pair of cargo pants, "_Anata wa heishi to nobeta. Naruto, wa dono you ni anata ni nani ga dekiru ka o misete o go kibōdesu ka? (You said you were a soldier. Naruto, how would you like to show me just what you're made of)_?"

Naruto froze in his tracks and turned towards Miller with a questioning look, "_Hontoudesu ka? Anata wa watashi to tatakau ka? (Really? You want to fight me)?_"

"_Te no te ni. Kore wa, subete no nochi ni subete no sentō no kisodesu. (Hand-to-hand. It's the basis of all combat after all)._" Miller said cracking his knuckles as Naruto started stretching himself out, "_Anata no hijou ni mottomo yoi dageki o yokose. Watashi wa toki ni teishi suru koto o oshiete agemashou (Give me your very best shot. I'll tell you when to stop)._" Seeing that Naruto was ready to fight he proceeded to bark the order to go, "_Hajime (Begin)_!"

Hearing Miller say to begin, Naruto wasted no time and went right for the knockout right off the bat. Miller grunted as he immediately sprang to the defensive, surprised at Naruto's speed, 'I know grown men don't even move that fast!' He avoided a wild right hand directed at his head and decided to see how the boy took damage, lashing out with a tight jab-hook combination that took advantage of the older man's height and reach.

Naruto took the two punches right in the face and let out a growl signifying that he acknowledged taking the damage before coming right back in for more. He was fast, but Miller was sharp and precise with his moves, 'Grey Fox was way faster.' He mused, keeping away from Naruto as the boy threw everything he had at Miller. Kicking from every angle; low, high, jumping kicks, but his attacks were all coming from directly ahead, 'Snake was faster too. Still he's no slouch. But his moves are pretty much whatever he thinks will work to hit me. That's no good.'

'Who is this old guy?' Naruto thought as he pressed his attack forward, taking another jab that busted his lip but didn't stop him. Miller wasn't trying to actually knock him out or hurt him, 'It's like he's playing with me. It looks like he's barely dodging!'

The air expelled rapidly from Naruto's body once Miller had seen enough and delivered a deep, driving kick right to the boy's stomach, knocking him on his backside. Naruto hacked out a cough or two, but got back up and set himself in a defensive stance, deciding to make Miller attack him.

Mistake.

"_Pēsu yori oukina aite o osu you ni shite kudasai (Don't let a larger opponent press the pace)._" Miller advised before taking Naruto's wordless invitation to attack. Naruto dodged his first probing jab, but that was just to get him in position to round-kick him in the ribs. Naruto tried to fire back with a punch but there wasn't enough room to do so. Miller was too close to him for a punch to hit with any decent force, but Miller himself still had tricks up his sleeve. Grabbing Naruto's punching wrist and wrapping his free arm around Naruto's neck from the front, a quick pop of his hips led to Naruto being thrown over Miller's body to the ground hard. Miller backed away and crossed his arms, "_Ka anata no mottomo yoi ka? Watashi wa subete no uchi ni iku koto o katatta. (Is that your best? I told you to go all out)._" The older soldier taunted, trying to goad Naruto into anger.

Naruto growled again, getting upset. He understood from the talks they had been having that Miller was a soldier, one of the best of his time before his retirement, but losing a fight without getting a good shot in was a stab at Naruto's ego. He thought he was better than that. Still he hadn't used _them_ yet, "Anata wa sore o shitaidesu ka? Anata wa sore o motte iru, dattebayo (You want it? You've got it)!"

"Dattebayo?" Miller said with an eyebrow raised in amusement, "What was that, jibberish?" He said in English so as not to upset Naruto further.

Instead of charging him again as Miller expected, except with more ferocity than before, Naruto lifted his hands, putting his index and middle fingers up in a seal that resembled a 't' as he shouted out a phrase, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Miller's eyes widened behind his sunglasses as he saw four identical copies of Naruto suddenly appear, indistinguishable from the original, "What the hell? Are those real?" Miller said in English, forgetting that Naruto didn't speak English. He was legitimately curious and purely shocked.

"_Kore wa okashiidesu... Watashi wa yuiitsu no gotsu no bunshin o tsukurimashita (This is weird… I only made five clones)._" The amount of chakra he put into the jutsu normally would have given Naruto at least fifty clones to work with, but he had to work with what he had for now. With that he ordered his clones to attack.

'He can use them to fight? That's terrifying!' Miller thought. Even not knowing anything about the world, Naruto knew one thing very well; how to fight. Five Naruto's rushed towards Miller, forcing him to rapidly backpedal away from the wave of blonde children, and he then realized why soldiers referred to child soldier as some of the most terrifying opponents any battlefield could produce. As three clones did whatever they could to try and hit Miller, two got behind him and tried to box him in. Only years of experience and trusting his gut when it said to dive and roll out of the fray kept the clones from trapping him and proceeding to deliver punishment.

"_Jitto (Hold still)!_" One Naruto snapped as one used the others as a springboard to launch itself into the air.

"_Teishi Hanashi (Stop talking)._" Miller ordered as he punched the flying clone right out of the air, forcing it to burst into smoke. He then took advantage of the sudden reversal of momentum and with a single roundhouse kick hit three Narutos in the face, forcing one to burst into smoke and forcing the others to the ground.

The only Naruto that hadn't taken damage yet was the only one to lay a hand on Miller, the one who had talked, and he made it count with an vicious uppercut to the man's stomach, grinning when he felt the man exhale harshly with a strained cough. His glee lasted for barely half a second when he felt Miller wrap an arm around his neck in a front headlock position and begin to squeeze, choking him and lifting him off of the ground with brute force. In a matter of moments, Naruto's eyes drooped shut and he went limp in Miller's grasp.

Dropping the unconscious boy to the ground, Miller turned his attention to the other clones only to find that they all disappeared into smoke, "Hm, it looks like if you knock out the real one or hurt him badly enough the others go away." He mused to himself before looking down at the unresponsive Naruto, "Still… that is one scary kid. I wonder what kind of weapons training he has." He rubbed his stomach and let out a cough, "What the fuck does that kid bench? I haven't had grown soldiers hit me that hard before."

Still, he thought over Naruto's performance as he picked the kid up under his arm and walked away, "He's fast, he's strong, he's like a pit bull with how he keeps coming forward, but his technique is lacking and he doesn't use angles. He just charges forward. Those copies of his definitely pick up the slack though." He shook his head in disbelief, "How in God's name did he do that? This is insane…" Instead of getting some answers out of the fight, a whole new set of questions just raised about Naruto.

XxX

On a wooden table set up in the backyard Naruto stood there and waited for Miller who had told him to wait there for a moment as he wanted to see something. Naruto was still slightly sore over how he had lost, but he had other concerns at the moment.

After being left alone in the back of the house Naruto remembered how his Kage Bunshin had failed to work the way he anticipated. Usually when he used his clones in conjunction with his hand-to-hand they would work towards their own flow in the battle. The mindset of multiple clones and Naruto, each with their own view of how a battle was proceeding and their own set of what options to take to succeed usually made his skills exponentially dangerous.

That did not happen against Miller. His clones merely followed directly in his lead the entire time. Also his clones would speak and insult his opponent to throw them off. The opponent usually never knew which Naruto was real unless they were able to defeat his horde of clones first and pick the real one out at that point. Miller grabbed the real him while there were still clones abound. And another thing, his clones took more damage than he thought they would. He was used to his clones dispelling after one good hit. These clones lasted after taking a few hard kicks and punches from Miller.

The original also felt them.

When Naruto woke up after his clones were knocked out he felt the damage that his clones had taken before being dispelled. That was also new. But it was time to test out something that was his most pressing concern at the moment.

Naruto put his fingers up in the Kage Bunshin seal he had become accustomed to and five copies of himself popped into existence again, 'Damn it, still only five? I put even more chakra into them this time.' Usually when he made clones they would look around and act alive. As Naruto walked in front of them and snapped his fingers in front of their faces he got no response, physical or otherwise, "_Nani ka ieyo (Say something)._" He ordered to his clones only to get no response. Naruto glared at the clones and one in particular. What was he going to do if they couldn't talk? They wouldn't be as useful as they were now that he knew they didn't have a lot of free will, hell they couldn't even talk apparently. Taking more damage only counted for so much if he felt the same pain when they eventually dispelled.

"Orokana kuso Bunshin (Stupid fucking clones)." One of the clones, namely the one Naruto was focusing on muttered. The original took a sudden step back and focused on the same clone, "Watashi wa karera ga hanashi o suru kono hōhō wa arimasu ka? Watashi no kokoro de wa? Subarashii (Is this how I make them talk? With my mind? Awesome)!" The clone said in place of Naruto's mental shout.

Naruto then proceeded to order more things with his mind, experimenting with what he could do while Miller was gone. He could order one particular clone if he could mentally isolate which one he wanted to use. Being able to see the clone helped, but if he knew its general position then he could still order it to do something. He had them work on a defensive position of surrounding and protecting the original, basic things to make sure he had the general idea down. His orders were clunky, and if he left an aspect of the order too vague his clones wouldn't know what exactly to do to pick up the slack for anything outside of what was directly ordered. This would take some work to get down.

Before he chose to dispel them, Naruto walked up to one clone and decided to make the last test to see if what he had gotten from Miller was right. Naruto placed his hands on a clone's shoulders and took a deep breath before jerking his head back and headbutting the clone directly in the face. Blood sprayed and the clone was knocked onto the ground, only lasting on for one more moment before the body disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Once it did however, Naruto sharply recoiled back and held his nose, his head swimming from seeming blunt damage. It felt like it had been broken but his nose was just fine. And that proved it. He would take the damage his clones took, but he wouldn't get the physical result of the injury, just the pain itself.

Taking this time to dismiss the rest of his clones back to nothing, Naruto turned towards the house wondering where Miller was when he saw the man standing there with a rather large duffel bag under one arm and Catherine standing with him, a look of pure amazement on her face, "_Tanoshin deru (Having fun)?_" He asked Naruto who was still rubbing his nose and was now glaring at him, bringing a chuckle from Miller as he walked over to the table he had left Naruto at. He opened the duffle bag and began taking things out.

Naruto watched him until he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see a younger blonde girl looking at him strangely, "I'm glad you're all better now, but what was that thing you just did? What were those other yous?" She asked excitedly, her excitement dropping when she realized that he didn't understand a word she said, "Sorry… you don't speak English."

Naruto didn't know what she had just said, so he simply grinned sheepishly and more or less apologized in Japanese before he heard Miller call out to him. Catherine watched curiously as Miller spoke to Naruto in Japanese and pointed at the things he had put down on the table from his bag. After instructing Naruto in what he wanted him to do, Catherine, who understood enough Japanese to know that he had asked Naruto to do something, decided to ask her father about it, "What did you tell Naruto to do?"

Miller watched as Naruto stared at the things he had placed on the table with some confusion, "Well he's a soldier like I told you he said, but I want to know exactly what he can do, the training he's had. I'm just testing to see what kind of weapons he can use."

Catherine watched Naruto peruse over what was on the table, not really believing what Naruto was supposed to be. Her dad was experienced enough to know otherwise though, she was just ten, so why not believe him in this instance, "Well… what about that body-copying thing he did?"

With all the things Miller had seen before since the 70's he really couldn't say that what Naruto did was unbelievable. Experimentation with things like psychokinesis had been happening for years, he had seen and fought against some stranger things in his time, but making copies out of thin air was something completely unfounded, and they were real, so it was no psychic illusionary trick on the mind. And he didn't think Naruto could or would shed any light on what his weird powers were.

Meanwhile Naruto was looking over the items that Miller had placed on the table. A few of the tools looked like the thing that The Sorrow had in a holster strapped to his chest when he saw him. They looked different though. Miller had called them 'guns' and Naruto hadn't bothered questioning him on anything, The way Miller had spoken of them they were probably common weapons where Naruto was. Too bad he didn't know how they worked.

There were long tube-like weapons that bared a similar looking purpose as the smaller guns he had just looked at, but Naruto didn't want to lay a hand on any of them. He knew he was taking too long. He had to do something. But then he saw the bladed weapons at the end of the table. They didn't look like the kunai of his world, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and Naruto simply reached for the smallest ones he could see.

They were small and silver, curved to look as if they could sail through the air. There were four holes carved in the handles and they were about four inches long. Naruto picked one up and flipped it to its lighter side, preparing it to throw at a target painted on a tree 15 yards away.

Miller raised an eyebrow, "All of those guns and he goes right to the heavy throwing knives?" His surprise continued when Naruto began throwing them like an old hand at the skill, not missing the target once. Though his results on the target varied, there was nothing that landed outside of the painted bullseye itself, most of them running the gambit of right around the middle circle itself. And he felt he had to step in once Naruto started throwing the combat knives that Miller had put out but had not figured prudent to put back up, "_Tsubasa to ii na (Okay that's enough with the knives)._" He said, switching to Japanese and hurrying to stop him before he damaged his good knives by throwing them all at the tree, "_Kon, anata wa juu o shiyou suru you ni shitai nodesuga (I'd like you to use a gun now)._"

Naruto looked nervously at the aforementioned weapons and decided that it was best to just tell the truth before he wound up looking foolish, "_Watashi wa houhou ga wakaranai. Watashi mo mae ni, jū o mita koto ga nai (I don't know how. I've never even seen a gun before)._"

Never seen a gun before? Okay, either he had amnesia in the worst way or he was the strangest Miller had ever met. There was no doubt that Naruto had some sort of military training. He never complained or looked uncomfortable when given orders to work hard, he was not afraid or out of his element in a fight, he could probably throw a pair of scissors just as well as he could specially crafted throwing knives, blood didn't particularly bother him… there was definitely something there.

XxX

(One Week Later)

There wasn't nearly as much work today, thus Naruto was allowed to knock off early. During his free time he decided to go a ways into the forests surrounding the house and test some things out. The results of his test put him in the dejected mood he was currently in.

He sat on a felled tree staring at his right hand. The reason he had come out there was because of the results of finding out how differently his Kage Bunshin worked in this world. If it was like that for that jutsu then what else was new?

It hadn't taken him long to find out what was new because he ran through his most basic skills. He could no longer transform. He didn't understand. How could he use some of his ninjutsu and not any of the others? The next jutsu he tried was the next one he had been taught after learning Kage Bunshin. Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu). The ability to summon creatures like toads, snakes, etc. of all shapes and sizes to fight on your behalf. This jutsu was also an epic failure. Nothing happened whatsoever. He didn't even waste any chakra when he tried to use it.

One of his hard earned skills were now useless to him, but he got a little bit of comfort in knowing that he could still use the technique he had used to fell the tree he was now sitting on, Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere). He chuckled to himself, trying to take something positive out of his situation. But he was still screwed to say the very least.

He couldn't speak the language, he knew nothing of where he was or anything at all other than how to use most of the things in Miller's house, something he was grateful for was that most of his appliances were things that he had experience with and could use. But the only thing he was good at, had ever been good at, was fighting. And in this world he was at a marked disadvantage when it came to that, as it became abundantly clear when he saw Miller pick up and use the guns on the table to show Naruto what they could do.

The bullets moved faster than any kunai he could possibly have ever thrown, and the longest gun with scope on it, which Miller picked up and referred to as a 'semi-automatic sniper rifle', whatever that meant, known as a PSG-1, saying that it could hit a target from half a mile away at a speed of 868 meters per second. Just thinking of fighting someone that had the capability of using weapons like that made him realize that he was up shit creek without a paddle.

Sighing to himself and deciding that he had been gone long enough, Naruto stood up and walked himself back to the large house that would be his temporary lodgings until Miller got sick of putting him up. He couldn't stay forever even if they said he could, it wasn't right. They owed him nothing. Doing stuff that would have constituted D-rank missions back where he came from wouldn't give him the right to stay there for as long as he wanted.

"Naruto." Before he got too far from where he had been sitting and thinking, Miller walked up through the woods, as if he had been looking for him. But how did he find him? It didn't look like he had tried very hard to do so at all. Naruto could swear that he had gone at least a few miles into the forest. Naruto was starting to think that Miller was cooler and cooler every day, "_Watashi wa anata no tame ni mite kita (I've been looking for you)._"

Naruto blinked in confusion, was there a chore he missed today or something? Maybe Catherine was looking for him again? She had been very helpful when Miller had endeavored to try and teach Naruto English. Her own Japanese was going to get better if she kept helping him so it was win-win. She didn't mind, she was interested in Naruto, bluntly calling him weird more than once, but she was very nice.

"_Dono yō ni watashi wa anata o kunren shitai to omoimasu (How would you like me to train you)?_" Miller bluntly offered. Not a hint of humor on his face. He knew Naruto was naturally talented. He knew enough about general combat to get along by himself, but there were too many things about Naruto that reminded Miller of himself. He wasn't sure if it was the fact that Naruto was of Japanese descent despite his western appearance, much like his own, but there was something that just told him that helping the kid was a good idea, "_Chotto kangaete mite kudasai. Anata wa eigo o hanasu koto ga dekinai, watashi wa anata o motomete kimashita kekkyoku sekai sonomono nitsuite wa nani mo shiranai... Sore ga umaku ikudarou (Think about it for a moment. You can't speak English, nor do you know anything about the world after the talks we've been having. It would work out)._"

Naruto opened his mouth to eagerly accept, this solving tons of the problems he felt he would have for himself, but a stern glance from Miller prompted him to shut his mouth.

Miller had instructed him to speak in English when he could in order to learn how to use it faster. He had gotten enough English in him to give simple answers around the house and even talk a little bit with Catherine over the last week, most of it picked up over the course of the first day after several hours, "Yes." Naruto said simply in English with a smile on his face.

Miller nodded tersely and stood up, walking up to Naruto who came up to Miller's chest with his diminutive 4'8 frame, "_Kon, anata wa subete no kai de _'Master Miller'_ toshite watashi o sanshō suru katei ya torēningu de iru ka dō ka kara. Watashi wa, anata ga watashi no meirei nishitagatte, isshōkenmei hataraite kitai shite imasu. Wakatta (From now on whether at home or training you will refer to me as Master Miller at all times. I expect you to follow my orders and work hard. Understood)?_"

Once again, Naruto eagerly nodded without a second thought. If being a soldier was what he was meant to do and if Miller could help him out in getting set up in his new surroundings then why on earth would he turn him down? It wasn't like he had any alternatives even if he didn't like the idea in the first place, and he most certainly did, "Yes. I'll do it." Naruto had more to say and wanted to express how much he was grateful but he didn't know enough English to go much further than just saying that he understood.

XxX

(Six Months Later – Winter 1999 – Naruto: Age 13)

Catherine walked outside onto the front porch of the house wearing a white parka as she saw her father getting their huskies all set and tied to the sled he was going to use. It had been snowing for the last four days straight, but her father had seen fit to send Naruto out on one of his impromptu 'drills'. Although Catherine was pretty sure that her father just wanted to see what it would have taken to break Naruto. He had yet to find something that did, "Why did you make him head out on foot in this dad? For groceries? Really? You have a sled!" She protested vocally.

Wearing a grey parka, Miller chuckled as he set the last of the dogs in its harness, petting the husky on its head before turning to his daughter, "What's the big deal Catherine? I just sent him into town, nothing big."

Catherine pointed at the dirt road that was completely covered in snow, "Town is like 20 miles away! Naruto's probably freezing to death out there! I hate going to town on the sled, I couldn't imagine having to actually walk it!"

Miller shook his head as he walked towards his fuming daughter. After the language barrier between Naruto and Catherine had for the most part been utterly obliterated by the speed with which the boy picked up English she grew to like him very much, almost like her older brother; her older brother that could hit a bullseye with any kind of blade thirty yards away and make five more of himself on command.

"He's fine." Miller dismissed casually. He loved his daughter dearly, but sometimes she seemed to forget that Naruto wasn't normal, or more like she hadn't gotten the gist of exactly what was so different about Naruto. He had gleaned all he could from Naruto about his clone technique and the powerful blue destruction technique he used in conjunction with one of his clones. Catherine knew more than enough about the things that Naruto was capable of. The time they found out he could stick to the wall during a particularly brutal session of unarmed combat training was just one example of the strange things that Naruto could pull out at any moment, "It's a straight shot all the way through. There's no way he got lost."

Catherine stared down the snow-packed road and let out a sigh, "I'm not worried that he got lost. You sent him out the second light broke. It's below zero today, what if he freezes out there?"

If she was worried about him freezing now then Miller wasn't going to tell her about the weekend stretch a few weeks back where he made Naruto climb a mountain with him and then left with all of the climbing equipment, more or less stranding him there until Monday. At least this time he let Naruto take his coat and other things unlike then. That time he gave the kid water, a few strips of jerky, a survival knife, a few to throw, and wished him the best of luck. Miller was convinced that Naruto was still sore at him for that impromptu test, "He won't freeze, trust me."

"And why not?" Catherine said, tapping her foot, crunching snow under her boot, "He's just as human as me. I'm eleven, he's thirteen. It's not that much of a difference. And Naruto's super-crazy!"

"He's not that crazy…" Miller tried to defend. Subtly giving Naruto psychological tests over the last six months showed him that Naruto was quite in his right state of mind. The screws were loose though… but who was he to judge?

The look on the young girl's face showed that she could not be swayed to that way of thinking, "What about the time two weeks after he got here when he shot himself in the leg to see what it felt like?"

Miller had to admit, that particular incident was one of the stupidest things he had ever borne witness to. In Naruto's defense however, he shot one of his clones so he didn't get the actual wound… it just felt like he had taken a 9 mm shot in the meat of his thigh for several hours afterwards. To this day when they trained with guns Naruto refused to touch the Beretta, "What better way to get acquainted with firearms then to know what it feels like to take a bullet?"

"He shot himself." Catherine said plainly, as if that would explain everything.

Miller walked up to Catherine and poked her in the forehead playfully, "First of all that boy's body is conditioned for extreme circumstances, second of all I'd like you to join in our physical workouts and see if there's much of a difference between you and him." Catherine took a rather large step back at that proposition. She saw what they did for training and she didn't want any part of it. Their warm-ups were what she considered workouts in of themselves, "And lastly in order to freeze you kind of need to stop moving." He said in a dry tone, "Teaching the brat English was hard for what single reason only dear?" He asked.

"Because Naruto hated sitting still and going through a book to learn it." Catherine admitted. It was true, once they started just doing things by pointing at things and labeling them he got English even faster than before.

"Exactly. He's fine." Miller said, walking back off of the porch to finish setting things in his sled, "He'll be back after I leave. Tell Naruto he can rest up for the week when he gets back, no training, just the normal chores. His body needs a break." Just as he said that, the huskies tied to the sled started going nuts, barking happily, turning Miller and Catherine's attention back towards the snowy road leading towards their property.

Jogging up towards the property was a figure that stood well around 5'4, wearing dark blue climate appropriate pants and a dark blue parka with the hood up and pulled tightly around the person's head. On the face of the figure was a black balaclava and their gloved hands were holding two large transport bags that were hanging from their shoulders steadily, "I got the stuff." The person said rather breathlessly as he came to a stop by the huskies, setting the large bags on the ground as well as the pack on his back.

Miller watched him walk up to the still happily barking huskies, taking a moment to play with them before he was addressed, "Giving you around thirty minutes to an hour to get everything on the list I'd say that you just ran basically 40 miles in under six hours… in the snow." The eyes through the holes of the figure's balaclava closed in what was more than likely a huge grin, "Naruto if this were the FOXHOUND cross-country march you would have slaughtered the record." He then narrowed his eyes, "You did that tree jumping thing of yours didn't you?"

Naruto scoffed as he pulled his hood back, revealing his full balaclava that had a metal plate stitched into the forehead of it, a leaf insignia in it, "What's the point of that? The road's a basic straight shot from here to town. Cutting through the woods wouldn't have helped." He then pulled his balaclava off to reveal bright blue eyes, familiar whisker-marks, and spiky blonde hair that was at the moment matted down due to the length of time he had been wearing his balaclava, "Are you jealous Master Miller?" Naruto quipped.

"That smart mouth won't fly in any military brat." Miller said. He had drilled it into Naruto's head a thousand times. Even when not on duty you shouldn't run your mouth around superiors. Was Naruto talented? Hell yes. Was Naruto also a grade-A smartass of the highest caliber? Absolutely.

Naruto shrugged his shoulders before stooping down to grab the bags again, "I guess it did in mine."

Miller rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses as Naruto walked towards the house with the things he had brought from town, "Apparently it didn't since they decided to throw you in a river to get rid of you. Bastards dumped you in my lap to make a decent soldier out of you. I wonder where you'll float to if I throw you back in the stream and let you drift again." He said as he got onto his sled and prepared to leave.

"You'll have to wait for spring then Master Miller." Naruto said as he jumped up the stairs to the porch to be met by Catherine opening the door for him and letting him inside. Naruto took his boots off at the door and walked towards the kitchen, "Hi Kitty." Naruto said in greeting, getting a shove for his trouble, "Mean."

"Don't call me that then jerk." Catherine warned as she watched Naruto place the bags down on the ground with a significant thud, "How heavy are those?" Naruto gave an 'I don't know' gesture as he unzipped them and started taking out groceries, "Good God Naruto, you make me feel lazy sometimes…" She muttered as she tried lifting one of the bags off of the ground only to put it right back down after a moment, "Kids shouldn't work like this."

"This kid does." Naruto said. For some reason Catherine didn't like him training so much. She didn't like him aspiring to become some kind of soldier like Master Miller, at least not as intensely as he was working. His simple response to that was, 'What else am I going to do with my life?' For all intents and purposes he didn't exist, "What else am I going to do? Go work with no identity at all? Besides, fighting is all I know how to do."

Catherine knew that Naruto was fully aware of what Miller was leaving to do. Miller could still pull some strings, and his contacts could get Naruto an identity. What he would do with it from that point was up to him though. It was difficult to gleam enough information out of Naruto to fill in the needed blanks however. They damn near wouldn't have figured out his birthday without hounding him about it for months. They were very upset to find out that it had already passed when they found out a few weeks ago his birthday was on October 10th.

Moving to assist Naruto with putting up the things he had bought, Catherine tried to reason with him, "Why do you think you have to fight? You could do something else."

Naruto grunted in a disbelieving manner, "_Watashi wa ta ni nani ka (What else could I do)?_" He said in Japanese, not really wanting an answer from her, hence why he switched languages.

Catherine smiled to herself, "_Anata wa dangan no kawari ni aniki o anata no nou o shiyou suru koto ga dekimasu (You could use your brain instead of bullets big brother)._" She noticed him look at her in shock. Ever since he got good enough at English to understand how to use it he hadn't heard her try to use any Japanese. He didn't know she had gotten any better at it.

Naruto let out a chuckle as they continued to work by themselves in the large house, "Don't you always call me musclehead anyway? And besides, I like using blades more… except for the FAMAS… How did Master Miller get a FAMAS?"

"Don't ask me…" Catherine said. Somehow things always got back to Naruto talking about fighting. He was always training, even when he was just supposed to be resting and watching TV, "I don't know, I don't want to know." She sounded rather snappish.

Naruto let off a nod that she couldn't see, knowing why she was speaking that was so suddenly, "Kitty I know you don't like me wanting to fight… but someone has to do it, you know?"

"Why?" Catherine turned towards him, glaring at his response. Soldiers were people, flesh and blood people. When soldiers fought that meant that people died. Naruto was training to be a soldier and no matter what he would either be the one killing or the one dying, "Why do you have to fight? Why does anyone have to fight?"

Sometimes Naruto forgot that Catherine was just eleven. As a student she had the equivalent of a freshman in high school's education, she actually enjoyed explaining things to Naruto about the world. But while there were many things she understood there were still some things that a child couldn't comprehend, at least a child that had never found a good reason to fight. Naruto was not in this mindset, "I wish I could give you a good reason… but I only have one, and it doesn't really apply as to why _I'm_ fighting. Maybe when I find out a good reason I can give one to you."

"That's not good enough…" She replied, "How do you think you're going to survive battles without having anything to fight for? I may not know much about war, but dad always told me that having something you think is worth fighting for helps you come home."

"I don't have anyone that I need to protect… and I don't have some desire to reach a high-rank." Those were the reasons that he fought when he was a ninja of Konoha, but now he wasn't sure just why he would fight, "I guess I'll just have to stay alive long enough to come up with my own reason."

Catherine held a frown on her face. She would just have to find some way to convince Naruto against fighting somehow before he decided to go and leave. Her big brother wasn't about to go and get his head shot off if there was anything she could do to convince him not to go… but for now his excuse would have to do.

XxX

(Fairbanks, Alaska)

Miller sat at a table in a bar as a rather thick file was passed to him. Stopping it with his hand he let out a short chuckle, "You work fast Colonel. I only got you the last of the kid's 'information' a week ago."

Across the table from Miller sat an older man in a grey military suit with medals adorning it graciously, "After the mess that was Zanzibar Land I was owed a few favors a little further upstairs. And if you think this kid is worth looking out for then I could at least help you with this. Between you and me I needed the break anyway."

"Military life getting you down Roy?" Miller asked amusedly, "I remember you getting all on my ass for retiring not even a year ago. Can't the high-ranking Colonel Roy Campbell cut it anymore?"

Campbell shook his head with a hearty laugh, "It's not a matter of being able to cut it. I just don't want it. I keep thinking that you and Snake had the right idea retiring. I think I might follow along with that. It sounds nice." He then gave a wry grin, "Not in Alaska though… not that this isn't a nice state."

Miller smirked, "Alaska's definitely keeping me in shape to say the least. That and the brat…" He rubbed a phantom pain in his jaw, "That's a completely different story though. No thirteen year old should hit that hard, run that fast, and do any of that other stuff…"

"Other stuff?" Campbell said questioningly.

"Other stuff." Miller confirmed without saying a word, "If you keep an eye on him when he finally begins his career you'll get what I mean by 'other stuff'. Until then I'll just keep the surprise to myself."

Campbell could only chuckle. If Miller was impressed by the kid that he had managed to pick-up then he had to be something special. The man had already trained Solid Snake and had worked alongside Big Boss in his time. Praise was not to come easily, "I can't wait to see it."

* * *

><p><strong>Once again let's give this one a whirl. I've wanted to write something like this for a while and decided to either shit or get off the pot so to speak. So prepare yourselves, it's a celebration.<strong>

**Next chapter will begin getting into Naruto's military career and other things that should be enjoyable. Stick around ladies and gentleman, if you're aware of my work then I hope you'll believe that there is good stuff to come soon. I'll be giving it my damndest.**

**Kenchi out.**


	2. Young Blood

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I was born too late to own one… and I can't draw for shit, thus I could not possibly own the other.

**Chapter 2: Young Blood**

* * *

><p>(Interior Alaskan Wilderness – Early 2000 – Naruto: Age 13)<p>

By this time, Naruto's understanding of the world he lived in was as good as it was going to be. The strange things that people used to move around such as automobiles and aircrafts threw him off (Miller actually had Catherine videotape him when he first saw what airplanes and helicopters could do in order to keep the absurdly hilarious reaction tape for posterity), but just like the difference in weaponry he adjusted accordingly to his new knowledge, actually enjoying riding in Miller's truck and learning to drive it out of necessity.

He learned much of the country he was residing in, the United States of America, and what being an immigrant like he was meant. The explanation he received from others told him that in comparison America was akin to the Konoha of this world. Perceived as the most powerful country, but unlike Konoha the U.S. had influence in things all over the world. It was strange to consider that there was only one super-powerful force that was really driving the world and at first barely believed that only one entity could have so much influence and power over everything… something that he would later wish he had taken more seriously and focused on harder in future years.

His education involved a lot of TV… of the educational variety. When told that Naruto's introduction to TV was to teach him lessons and nothing but, it could be understandable that Naruto grew to dislike television. Every time he watched it was either to get some kind of cultural training or to learn more about combat or history.

Miller informed him of just what made the best soldiers he had ever seen in his life. The man known as Big Boss, Miller often spoke of him in a romanticized fashion. He made the man seem untouchable. How the man had fought dangerous missions for years and years from the 50's on until his eventual demise in 1999, the year Naruto appeared. The man that had stopped nuclear war at least three times in his lifetime. Miller actually compared Naruto's ability to blend in forests to his, as if Naruto was never even there at times and at others seemed to be a spirit, or seemed to be everywhere.

The next comparison made was with a man known as Gray Fox. Naruto never learned his real name and had to fight down a few twitches being compared to a man known as 'Fox', but from what he had heard, the man's own tenure as a child soldier reminded Miller of Naruto himself, except from what Miller told him his career was far more brutal. His end, met in 1999 much like Big Boss, came after an entire lifetime of conflict.

The last comparison was with the only one of these men that was still alive. Solid Snake had killed both Gray Fox and Big Boss during the same mission and actually owned two victories over the latter. Miller's stories of how he had fought the greatest and most infamous mercenaries ever brought to one area won Naruto over. His stories of how Snake had defeated 25 to 40 foot bipedal tanks with nuclear abilities made Naruto think of his own victory over his largest opponent, the Shukaku demon that possessed Gaara… although Gaara's demon never had machine guns or missile launchers…

But nuclear weapons…

Since he had discovered his own closely kept secret the night he became an official ninja, Naruto had feared the demon that sat in his body as the biggest threat possible. Knowing that in this world the possibility of all of existence being wiped out with the push of a button, with no chance of stopping it, made him terrified… and he finally understood why he was treated the way he had been in his childhood with indifference and with most ignoring his presence; because it was the way that most people in this world treated the existence of nuclear weapons.

If they weren't in sight, if nobody talked about them or openly acknowledged them, if people pretended that they didn't really exist then they wouldn't feel any fear. Because no matter how much Naruto tried to convince himself that no one was stupid enough to go out and use such a weapon there was still always the possibility… just like in Konoha how others tried to convince themselves that he was just a little boy, there was always the opportunity of him drawing upon the awesome power of the Kyuubi no Yoko, even unintentionally.

Despite all of this, Naruto loved to train. He didn't think about how he had even gotten so good at so many things so fast. He had to thank both Master Miller for how he had been working him to understand the military of this world and country, and he had to thank Catherine for helping him understand what was truly appropriate and what wasn't when she spent time with him. Speaking of Miller…

Miller watched Naruto taking some leisurely target practice in his spare time and couldn't keep the frown off of his face as he saw Naruto take aim.

TAT TAT TAT!

Miller palmed his face hard and shook his head as Naruto's shots veered off-course. Hopefully no small woodland creatures were harmed with that god awful shooting, "For the love of God kid, drop the FAMAS." He pulled it out to show off with, he didn't expect Naruto to actually want to use it.

"No way." Naruto replied, glaring down the firing field as he took aim again, "This thing isn't knocking me on my ass anymore. That's an improvement isn't it? I'm not wasting your time to use it now Master, I'm trying to get using it down on my own time." Miller walked over to Naruto and stealthily switched the safety off, forcing an empty sounding click out of the gun when Naruto pulled the trigger, "Hey."

With Naruto's capability to fire put to a halt, Miller snatched the assault rifle out of Naruto's hands, "Didn't you learn anything when I took the SAA away from you when you were trying to screw around with that? Why didn't I let you use that gun to free-shoot with?"

Naruto let out a groan as he had to dredge up that embarrassing memory, "Because the recoil kicks my ass…"

"Because the recoil kicks your ass." Miller nodded. Though he didn't explain it like that when it originally happened, Naruto got why he wasn't to use that weapon yet, "Now why did the recoil kick your ass?"

"Because my body isn't able to absorb the shock the right way." Naruto said before tilting his head, "That's the reason right Master?" Miller nodded to him, putting a scowl on Naruto's face, "But I can already use lots of other stuff." He then crossed his arms and looked away, "And I don't care what you say, I don't want to use the MAC-11… or the Beretta." He added as an afterthought.

"Why do you want to use the FAMAS so badly?" Miller asked him, not getting an answer from the boy. It was strange. Most people when they found something that they couldn't use wouldn't try to use it again. Naruto just reloaded and kept trying. He had to start locking up the ammunition to keep Naruto from trying to go out and shoot in his spare time because it was how he spent a lot of it. For some reason the boy absolutely despised television… something that Catherine swore was weird. Naruto's argument was that he had lived cooler things than people fabricated to put on-screen, however he never elaborated on just what he had done.

It wasn't that Naruto was trying to be private. Naruto's reason for not telling them anything about his life after he told them that he actually remembered everything and didn't have amnesia was because he swore up and down that if he told them anything they would never believe a word he said. They would call him insane and possibly have him committed, thus he kept to himself and they didn't pry. Well Miller himself didn't pry. Catherine often pried because she wanted Naruto to stop training so hard. Naruto would tell her little stories about himself, keeping things tame and in the realm of believability, and they would keep him from training until the tale was complete.

The girl just didn't get why Naruto worked so hard. Miller knew. He understood and he was more than willing to make sure that when the time came for Naruto to try and make his way in the world he would be ready for anything… which was why for his own good he needed to take this gun away from Naruto, "You can't just force yourself to use a weapon and make it your own. The FAMAS isn't a good fit for you."

"Then I'll _make_ it a good fit Master Miller." Naruto asserted. From what Miller had told Naruto in the way of stories, especially the stories of the man codenamed Solid Snake, he wouldn't always have the luxury of being able to use the kind of weapons that he wanted to use, that he was best at using. He had to learn how to use everything, how to do everything. With weapons like guns and bullets, bombs, things like that there was no room for error like there was in his world. You can't sense a sniper's bullet coming your way the way you can locate someone sneaking up on you. He could not afford to be lax in anything, and with a man like Miller willing to teach Naruto everything he knew unlike the stingier constraints that the world of ninja Naruto came from had.

Miller could only give Naruto a strict look. The boy was stubborn. Being stubborn was a double-edged sword. It could keep you alive or it could get you killed. Naruto had skill with smaller arms. Despite his dislike of the gun he shot himself with, Naruto was becoming a surgeon with the Baretta. He could only imagine what Naruto could do with a higher-quality semi-automatic pistol rather than the cheap Baretta. Still, Naruto absolutely despised submachine guns, most notably the MAC-11 that he was forced to train with and gain proficiency with.

Miller didn't understand why he hated them. For a solider like Naruto, who was nine times out of ten going to be the fastest moving human being on the battlefield, a weapon like that seemed to be perfect for him. Moving as fast as he could and using such an easy to transport and reload weapon, it was tailor-made for him.

Naruto wasn't just quick, he was sudden. When Naruto was in the middle of a fight his movements were spastic, he was hard to pin down whenever they practiced with blanks, right from the very beginning. With over six months of getting shot at under his belt Naruto only got better and better at avoiding gunfire. Learning that his clones returned the pain of their damage to him made Naruto keep from using them to cover or take damage for him the way he would have in his own world, thus Naruto's use of cover was growing by leaps and bounds.

In one fashion, Naruto's use of what Miller had called a movie trick, his use of blindfiring from behind cover was magnificent. After six months of training, he could now shoot at target just off of sound or feeling a shift in the air. He would usually miss, but he would force the target to move, giving him an opening to open fire from that point forward.

Miller's stealth training was additionally well received. Naruto took to stealth like a fish to water. For a kid that loved to run his mouth, Naruto knew when it was time to shut the hell up and sneak about, and he hated being loud anywhere except from flapping his gums.

He hated wearing boots because no matter what he did he couldn't walk in a way that would muffle his footsteps. Miller had to break him in his habit of running around the forest barefoot due to that being a dangerous practice, he even did it once at the start of winter in the snow, he hated wearing boots that much. Naruto hated wearing clothes that would make ruffling noises. He would rather throw or use a knife than use a gun until he was told that many guns could be equipped with suppressers to silence the sounds of gunfire.

He had also shown Miller his unique way of avoiding making footprints by keeping to the trees as much as he could, with his ability to effortlessly stick to surfaces on command Catherine had jokingly referred to him as 'Spiderman' and in response Naruto had started calling her 'Kitty' harkening back to the time when Naruto started learning English and began learning how to spell their names. With 'Catherine' having the same first three letters as 'cat', Naruto had a hidden bomb of a name to deliver to Catherine which he took generous use of regularly.

Catherine actually despised playing hide-and-seek with Naruto, even with obvious parameters set that Naruto couldn't leave the immediate property surrounding the house or hide somewhere that Catherine couldn't reach. It was impossible for her to locate him even in the snow where he made footprints. Leave it to Naruto to turn singlehandedly turn a 10/11 year old off of a game.

The concept of camouflage and the like was something Miller did not need to go over. He only needed to touch up certain parts of Naruto's stealth, such as refraining from making noise and keeping yourself hidden until it was too late for your enemy to do anything about your presence. In their earlier exercises Naruto had a bad habit of running directly from his hiding area at Miller who had his back turned. A very bad habit in the instance that your enemy had a gun and you did not. He had to coach Naruto to wait until your opponent passed by your hiding place, not even acknowledging your presence before striking.

As he watched Naruto peruse over the weapon selection on the table that was left for him to work with, minus the FAMAS, he couldn't help but believe that Naruto had to have more than a few soldier genes in him. It was like he was bred for fighting, he picked up everything Miller had to teach eagerly and he got the basic concepts of how to fight down so easily. He just needed to learn that there were certain things that he couldn't do and shouldn't try to force, like his use of the FAMAS. Using something that wasn't meant for him could get him killed, and it seemed like that was a lesson that only a dangerous experience would drive home. Nothing Miller could manufacture to happen at home would teach him that, nor would it be anything Naruto could learn in any sort of boot camp.

That was a battlefield lesson, and those were the most dangerous to learn. Thinking of that he could see why Catherine was hesitant when thinking about or speaking of Naruto leaving to become an active soldier.

Naruto picked up another pistol, Miller noted it to be Naruto's favorite gun aside from his ill-fated attempts to fire the FAMAS, the reliable and easily customizable Heckler & Koch Mark 23 SOCOM pistol. It was a good weapon but if that was what Naruto chose to use in the field it would be particularly heavy. The added laser sight and the suppresser that he was certain Naruto would demand to have on the gun would make it five pounds in total.

Naruto emptied a magazine down towards the set up targets and frowned, speaking to himself, "I'm going to need some moving targets again soon so I don't get rusty." He could always make clones and order them to engage him in a mock firefight, but that was stupid for several reasons. So he was stuck with good old stationary targets.

"I've pulled some strings." Miller said when he saw Naruto eject his empty magazine in preparation to reload, "What would you say to six months before setting out?"

"Six months?" Naruto repeated questioningly, laying his gun down on the table and turning to face the older blonde, "You can get me an actual spot somewhere in six months?"

Miller nodded and smirked, "Consider it one last favor from a friend of mine before he retires. He's also the man that helped me get you an identity all set up. You are now Naruto Uzumaki, United States citizen by way of immigration from Japan, born to an unknown Japanese mother and a roaming mercenary father, both deceased shortly around the time of your birth. I am your sponsor for your residence as a citizen… well I was until you were legally emancipated. Or so the records say, and you will have to memorize all of the false information in your 'records'. Congratulations by the way." He finished with a smug look.

"Wow…" Naruto muttered, following with some Japanese cursing in amazement under his breath, "You must really be connected Master Miller…"

"You don't know the half of it kid." Miller said with a grin as he adjusted his sunglasses on his face, "When you get yourself into the army and dust right through boot camp people are going to be knocking down your door to get to you, and you _will _dust right through… For the love of God I've been training you like a damn FOXHOUND recruit for the last six months and you still haven't failed anything yet. The only problem is your attitude. You need to know how to follow orders kid. You're still rebellious when I tell you things."

Insubordination was a problem that Naruto had always had. In Konoha he followed his orders, did everything Kakashi told him to do, but not without much griping in many cases when he didn't like what he was commanded to do. Here he couldn't even gripe at all.

He couldn't do that here from how Miller had been instructing him. Mouthing off eventually started getting him harsher punishments, keeping things askew when Miller told him to straighten up got him workouts that literally went until Naruto could not physically respond to Miller, blacking out… and then he would do it again the next day because Miller knew his body could take it.

Most of the insubordination had been kicked out of him. He was doing fine after six months of getting the smart-ass worked out of him, but with Naruto's nature it would probably resurface at the worst possible time when he was at boot camp. It depended on whether or not his drill sergeant chose to pick on him regularly or not, because it was clear by now that the kid was a hot head.

Naruto wasn't just going to let that lie however. If Naruto couldn't act the way he truly wanted to then he would suck it up just long enough… just long enough to get himself in a position that it didn't matter anymore. He never wanted a desk job anyway. People like that in Konoha he always wondered how they could stand it, and it went double for this world. All Naruto wanted to do was fight.

Still he was confident. Miller had trained him hard. Naruto felt better than he ever had in his life, and in six months he would only be better. Who else got special forces training before they even joined the basic branch of any military? It made him feel like one of the kids in the big ninja clans back in the Academy of his youth. This time it was _him_ that would have a leg up over the others.

"I won't let you down Master Miller." Naruto asserted, turning and giving the salute that Miller taught him would be appropriate for the U.S. Military, "I'll be the best, you'll see."

A smile pulled at Miller's lips, "You probably will kid… you probably will."

XxX

(Six Months Later)

Naruto sat on the bed in the very Spartan setup that was his room at the Miller household as he finished packing his things. It was finally time for him to leave. He had grown again. His 5'7 body had been molded for nothing more than the harshest conditions after being tempered for over a year in the most extreme of the ever shifting climate of the Alaskan interior. There was no more preparation that could have been done.

He could see the eleven year old Catherine leaning against his open doorframe staring at him with her green eyes appraising his every move. Naruto was no fool. He knew by now that after a year she was utterly attached to him in the lonely wilderness of Alaska. With nothing more than him and her father there she didn't really have anyone else. She never saw her mother, and with Naruto her only friend he was her best friend and brother in all but blood.

She had done everything she could think of to get him to stay.

She had asked him at Christmas and on her birthday, both of which ran close together, that she didn't want a gift, she just wanted Naruto to not leave. That had gotten Naruto to actually coax the things that she really wanted out of her so that she could be given proper gifts. Naruto was damned persistent and wound up strong-arming the information out of her.

She had begun to start asking Naruto to teach her how to shoot, hoping that she could deter his training or maybe get him interested in teaching her so that he could stay around for longer until she was good. That had done nothing as she had found out when Naruto happily praised her for being a tremendous shot with his favorite handgun. She had gotten good too fast and it had backfired on her.

In the end she simply couldn't make him stay, and time flew by like it was nothing. All she could do was enjoy the time she had. Whenever Naruto wasn't training he was always with her. No matter what she was doing she would go and find him. Eventually he got the drill and after his training he would always find her himself. It was like he enjoyed her company just as much as she enjoyed his and neither ever complained about the other's presence.

So why? Why was he so set on leaving? She just didn't understand. He was going to miss everything. She would probably never see him again. It was terrible. She wished her dad would just move again so that they could follow Naruto for his training, "You're really leaving tomorrow."

"Yeah." Naruto said, not looking up to face her. If he made eye contact with her he would probably make Catherine cry, and that was the last thing he wanted. He couldn't even give her a good excuse as to why he was leaving. Telling her that he just wanted to fight and that was all would upset her, "It'll be fine Kitty I promise."

Catherine shook her head and responded, ignoring his nickname for her that usually made her angry, "No it won't. Don't lie to me Naruto." Her little hands were gripping the frame of his door tightly, "What am I going to do if you're not here? You're not coming back."

Naruto frowned and finally looked up to lock eyes with her, "Don't say that. Are you kidding me? Why wouldn't I come back? I love you guys, you're the only people that I know." He let out a short laugh, "What are you talking about?" He moved his travel bag and patted the spot next to him on the bed, "Come here. Talk to me."

Catherine walked over to him at a reserved pace and plopped down next to him, laying her head on his shoulder with a heavy sigh, "I'm scared Naruto. What if you die and I never get to see you again?"

"I won't die." He said rolling his eyes, "Would you stop saying that? If you say something like that enough times then it's going to actually happen. Do you want me to die?" Catherine gave him a shocked look and shook her head, "Then stop saying that I am. Believe in me, it's not like I'm going off to war or something, it's just training. You'll see me at Christmas." He gave her a fake stern glance, "You _are_ going to let me come back for Christmas aren't you?"

Catherine could tell he was playing with her and started to laugh, "Yes of course. Dad would never turn you away Naruto. When you come back I promise there'll be tons of ramen here for you. We have time to stock up without you eating it all now."

Naruto turned around and began to dig through the bag on his bed, "Well if we're making plans for something that happens later…" He pulled out a necklace that had a very valuable looking gem sitting at the end of it, "…Then I want you to keep this safe for me. I'll probably lose it at boot camp." He said as he placed it in her hand, "This thing was a gift from someone that thought I would be special one day, I definitely want it back later."

That necklace had been inseparable from Naruto when he first appeared. He actually defended it in his sleep when she tried to grab a hold of it from around his neck. Even when he had been training with Miller he would keep it tucked underneath his shirt close to his heart.

She knew that it meant something to him because it was all that he had worth anything that truly belonged to him. Whatever it represented it was special, "I'll take good care of it." She said, giving him a big hug, "You know I love you right? I'm going to miss you."

"I'll call you whenever I get the chance." Naruto responded, returning her hug as she squeezed him tightly, "You can't get rid of me that easily."

Catherine just nodded, keeping herself pressed against him, "I don't care where you came from. Family or not you're still my big brother." She said as she started to stain his chest with tears.

She had no idea that just being there and hearing all of that from her was breaking Naruto's heart. She knew how strange he was. He had no actual background, never told her anything personal about his past, he had freaky powers that no one else in the world could do, had a physical makeup that no one could comprehend… after knowing all of that, she still loved him like he was her own brother. And he loved her like his little sister because she was the only girl that had ever bothered to get this close, "There's no way I'm not coming back Kitty. Just you wait. I'll see you in a few months."

XxX

(The Next Day – Fairbanks, Alaska)

Naruto stood at the last point that would allow people that weren't taking the flight to follow wearing a brown pair of boots, a pair of loose blue jeans, a black zipped-up flight jacket, and a black skull cap a metal plate with the leaf insignia stitched on the front. He was carrying a single bag with him containing everything worth bringing that he had procured thus far in the world, "I guess I'll see you guys around."

Miller walked up to Naruto and put a hand on his shoulder, just about coming eye to eye with the boy that just one year prior was a general runt, "Just don't flip out when the plane goes up into the air, don't do anything I wouldn't do, remember everything I taught you, and just don't forget about us kid."

"And call." Catherine added afterwards, "I want to know how you're doing."

Naruto grinned at her and nodded, "I'll call you all the time Kitty. I promise."

Catherine punched Naruto in the shoulder hard, "Don't call me Kitty."

Naruto scratched his nose, dismissing her request absentmindedly to make her upset, "I'll stop calling you Kitty when I drop dead." He then opened his arms and Catherine immediately ran into them for one last hug before he left, this time holding back her tears. After she let go, Naruto gave Miller a firm handshake and one salute that Miller actually returned before Naruto began walking towards his flight.

"Don't shoot yourself at basic training!" Catherine's voice rang out, stopping Naruto in his tracks as he heard her laughter ring out through the terminal. He turned back and gave her a mock glare only to find her waving. Shaking his head in amusement he walked to board his plane.

XxX

It had been well into the time since Naruto had made his way to begin his One Site Unit Training in August and as far as he was concerned everything was just as he had been conditioned to expect thus far. Getting his hair cut pissed him off, but it was hair and he didn't particularly care too much after a day or two. He completely slaughtered the physical assessment test as they were things he could have sleepwalked through when he was nine. Running a mile in 8 minutes? Seriously?

As he expected right out of the gate he was targeted by his drill sergeant for the obvious reason of him being 14 years old. The combination of being an emancipated immigrant minor that was only really there due to several recommendations from high up the food chain so to speak made the man want to test him. Unfortunately his excuse for what was tough was what Master Miller had drilled into Naruto as being the below the standards of his daily grind. By week two he hadn't managed to break the man's hazing of him but he had a very positive experience during the initial unarmed combat training.

Positive being that he was chosen to represent his entire platoon at the end of the instruction period to go against the best of all the others, who did not believe that a 14 year old boy, despite being unanimously chosen due to the quick and decisive beatings he had managed to lay on anyone chosen to face him out of his entire instruction group.

There was no contest. Even if the opponents he had faced had extensive hand-to-hand training so had Naruto, and he had been in more fights than a fresh army recruit could say they had taken part in, and he had never had the luxury of actually fighting anyone his size, it was always against opponents that had physical advantages over him, especially when he had been a ninja. Here the playing field was leveled in that respect due to Naruto's growth spurt and his unnatural speed and strength that he did his best to curb but failed to do. He couldn't hold back.

Naruto dominated the obstacle portions of training. Climbing the victory tower was child's play even without using chakra, something he hadn't relied on for a moment upon his arrival lest he freak people out even more than his considerable skill would in the first place.

Naruto quickly took to the use of M16 assault rifle, admitting that it was easier to use than the FAMAS he had so desperately wanted to properly use while he had been in Alaska. As a matter of fact Naruto had shown proficiency with all weapons presented meant for recruits to gain some familiarity with them. He didn't particularly like heavy weapons like the 249 SAW machine gun or the M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun, but that was more because Naruto took pride in being faster than everyone else. Using a weapon with sweeping potential like that would debunk his speed advantage if he were to fight in open areas or places with flimsy cover.

No matter what was thrown at him Naruto could either do it, or if he couldn't do it right off the bat would know how to do it by the end of the week well enough to exceed expectations. A nine week course of basic combat training was more than enough time for Naruto to smooth his wrinkles out.

Despite his skill and teamwork affinity that he had cultivated working in squads in his home village, Naruto was not seen as much of a leader and was resented for much of the time he had been with his training group until he was finally confronted on the matter.

The simple question during down time of "Why are you here?" Was asked with the expectation of some childish answer as Naruto when out of the sight of the drill sergeant had developed a rather upbeat, fun reputation that the other platoons were well aware of due to the perpetual smile and complete lack of scowling that the boy ever did.

What was not expected was for Naruto to take a moment, surrounded in the barracks by everyone actually wanting to hear his answer after he had taken time to pause. The boy merely shrugged and met all of their eyes as he spoke, "Because there isn't anything else I can do. A lot of you guys have things that you can get to or other stuff to do after you get out of the army. I'm not leaving. All I know how to do is fight… so I guess I'll just keep doing that until someone gets lucky and takes me out." He then let out a chuckle and a huge grin, "It's not like I want to take any desk job either, that's way too boring you know? I'm a fighter."

A rather morbid answer that stunned more than a few of them, but the way his voice sounded as he delivered it, the casual nature with which he spoke, and the fact that this didn't seem to bother him in the slightest that this was to be the way he lived was the turning point in how they viewed him. By the time he had returned from Christmas Break in Alaska with Miller and Catherine he found that things had improved significantly with his interaction among his platoon.

XxX

(Christmas Break – Interior Alaskan Wilderness – December 2000 – Naruto: Age 14)

Naruto was using this time off to do something that he admittedly had been neglecting for over a year and a half since he had arrived in this world, rest. Wearing a pair of cargo shorts and an U.S. Army t-shirt he was lazily sprawled out on a couch up in the loft. The couch he had originally woken up on became his favorite place in the Miller house to just laze around doing nothing. This was where Catherine found him as she returned from the snowy wilds of outside, having just gotten through feeding the huskies, "Dad says to get your butt up and tell him what you want for Christmas before he heads out to Fairbanks to get the stuff."

Naruto looked over at his fellow blonde and let out a chuckle, "Christmas? Seriously? I don't need or really want anything. What am I ten like you?" He quipped in a jibe at Catherine's age.

"I'm twelve you jerk!" She said, stomping her foot on the ground.

"I know." Naruto returned with a grin, "By the way did you like the present I sent you?"

Catherine blinked as she stared at her older brother figure. Despite the calls he made periodically he had never alluded to actually recognizing that he was aware of her birthday and she had never dropped that knowledge on him, figuring that he had enough to worry about without having to feel responsible for sending a gift thousands of miles from one corner of the country to the other, especially since her birthday sat right before he was to return for Christmas Break. However he had not gotten that memo and had managed to send her a gift from where he was to her.

How he had managed to get her something as expensive as a laptop she would never know especially with him being as much of a luddite as he was, but then again if Naruto had money there was only one thing he would be buying for himself for sure, and unfortunately for him it was something he really couldn't have on him while he was training in Georgia.

"Yes I did, thank you for the laptop Naruto." Catherine said gratefully. He was so good to her all of the time, "Sorry. I tried to send you ramen for your birthday but dad said you would just get yourself into trouble by eating it every single moment you had free time."

Naruto frowned. It had been several months since he had last had ramen. Hearing that Catherine had tried to send him some but was stopped by Miller pissed him off and made him want to go and find his trainer to give him what for with his fists and feet, but then again he had to admit that the last thing you do for an addict is enable him, and if Naruto had been given what probably would have been an econo-sized box of ramen in multiple flavors he would have torn into it like a wild animal and gotten himself in trouble.

"It's okay Kitty." Naruto assured her with a smile as he saw her taking off her boots and white coat, having just come from outside, "It's the thought that counts. I appreciate it."

Catherine took a seat in the chair directly next to Naruto's nesting couch and flipped on the TV that he often neglected to turn on, "No problem, ramen is so super-cheap. You sure like weird a food as your favorite." She then pointed down towards the location of the kitchen, "I actually _did_ buy it though. It's downstairs in the kitchen right now." She turned to the side to find Naruto staring at her intensely, unnerving her slightly, "What?"

Naruto simply lifted his hands in the seal for his favorite ninjutsu and formed a clone that immediately went downstairs to locate and fix Naruto his desired and hard-earned treat of ramen. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the stuff he got in Konoha from his favorite restaurant, but it was the best he was going to get without going to Japan to get it from there. With his doppelganger sent off to fix his treat, he gave a grateful grin to Catherine, "You do know that I love you dearly don't you?"

"I know." Catherine said as she touched the necklace he had left in her care that was around her neck, prominently on display. She smiled at him sweetly and scratched his head as his hair had grown back out after being shaved off, "Then don't call me Kitty anymore."

Naruto sighed happily as he started flipping a throwing knife in his hand, "I'll stop calling you Kitty when I drop dea-. Ow…" He muttered when Catherine switched over to pulling on one of his cheeks painfully, "I am holding a knife just so you know."

"But you won't ever stab me." Catherine said confidently, still pulling on Naruto's cheek, "You love me dearly. I'm your little sister. You would fight a bear for me."

Naruto started looking at her, his right eye twitching in irritation, "I'll tie you up, take you into the forest, and feed you to a damn bear if you don't let go of my cheek. The ramen train is coming and I am about to destroy the bowl."

Right on cue, Naruto's clone came up the stairs with a piping hot bowl of ramen that it handed over to Naruto before giving him a pair of chopsticks and dispelling by Naruto's mental order. Catherine watched him split his chopsticks, mutter something in Japanese, and begin to go to town on what was in the exceptionally large bowl, "Did you get the largest bowl in the house?" A nod from a rapidly eating Naruto was her answer, "How many packets of ramen are in there?"

"Four." He said before digging back in with abandon.

In a matter of five minutes or less, Naruto had destroyed his meal and had lain his bowl aside, content with himself. Catherine just shook her head as she continued to look for something on TV worth watching, deciding to stop on a channel playing a Christmas marathon of old martial arts movies once she saw Naruto's eyes show some interest in it, "You're so gross…" She said in reference to Naruto's eating habits.

"Naruto!"

Hearing Miller's drill sergeant voice forced Naruto to quickly jump to his feet and stand at attention, prompting Catherine to break into a smattering of giggles, due to the fact that Naruto was standing with one barefoot in his gigantic bowl that once held his ramen and broth, "That's so mean dad! He's probably terrorized whenever someone calls his name like that at his base."

Miller walked up the stairs with a smirk as he found Naruto still standing at attention, "At ease brat. Now I know Catherine told you what I asked. What do you want for Christmas?"

Naruto gave Miller a deadpan look and plopped back down on the couch, ignoring the drops of broth on his foot, "Well first of all I want you to never do that again for obvious reasons and I want more ramen, lots more ramen. And if you think you're getting too much ramen I want you to get a little bit more because there's no such thing as too much ramen." He wanted to indulge badly.

Well aware of Naruto's borderline obsession with ramen, Miller shook his head at Naruto and smirked, "You are the cheapest person to go Christmas shopping for. My wallet thanks you."

"Whatever… don't thank me now." Naruto replied flippantly before pointing at him with his eyes narrowed, "When I graduate after AIT (Advanced Individual Training) in 4 months I'll be expecting my own damn setup of guns and ammo in my room waiting on me when I come back. Also find someone that can craft me some kunai and shuriken. I can still throw and use those better than the knives."

"Ninja wannabe. Do you really think you can use actual shuriken?" Catherine muttered, making fun of Naruto. If there was one thing she had learned about Naruto since he had been living with them it was that he was very interested in the ninja of this world after he figured out that they existed, having referred to himself as one in passing several times after letting them in a little on his past, "Are you sure you're not Japanese? Because that sounds like it came straight out of a manga." As much as she loved him and as young as she was she just couldn't believe that.

Miller did believe him however, because he knew personally that ninjas were very real. The realm of possibility of Naruto being one was not very farfetched at all. He had watched Solid Snake fight one personally in Zanzibar Land not even six months before Naruto appeared.

"I hate you." Naruto grit lowly, gnashing his teeth, "Do I need to pull out anymore superpowers out of my ass before you start believing the shit I say or what? Because I've already thrown all the ones I've got at you."

"Language." Catherine chided gently.

"_Okoru (Get bent)._" Naruto retorted before getting smacked on the head by Miller and Catherine, "You see this is why I keep large chunks of my past away from you guys. Not because you'd be scared, but because you'd act like this." He jumped up off of the couch and started walking away, ranting, "Give me some kunai, some shuriken, some metal wire… hell I'd show you all how much of a ninja I really am. Two years younger than me, gonna tell me I ain't a ninja…"

Catherine waited before he got out of ear shot before blocking a snicker, "I think I just made him mad." She got up and gleefully chased after him, "So does your drill sergeant know you're a ninja too Naruto?" Hearing Naruto loudly gripe from the other room brought a smile to her face, 'I guess he was right. I mean he's gone more, but other than that nothing's really changed at all.'

XxX

When Naruto returned after his Christmas Break to Fort Benning to complete the first phase of his training he was actually encouraged to join the U.S. Army Ranger School due to being assured that what he would face would be far more difficult than his training thus far.

Primed for the challenge and eager for a possibility of facing more combat sooner, Naruto took up the challenge and accepted.

For over two months he was trained thoroughly in styles of combat he found himself more at home with; learning more of ambushing, conducting raids, and stealthier movements from place to place. And it was physically taxing. The fact that the physical exercises were doubled and in some cases tripled from what he originally had been given at base was not the real issue, he still went through it easily. He only got two meals a day instead of three, he carried more equipment than he had been trained to handle as he sometimes took around 90 pounds, he slept around three hours a night after days that sometimes resulted in 20 hours of training, giving him a true appreciation for down time.

His squad work in this facet was highly esteemed. During mock missions he was always right on point, knowing how to work during ambushes and firefights.

He loved the mountaineering aspect of Ranger School just the way he had loved it with Master Miller. Anything having to do with anything he already had experience with was a foregone conclusion that he would enjoy and excel at it. He did however, absolutely despise working in the Georgia swamps to train, but he was aware enough of working in wilderness-filled areas to easily deal. Hell, it was no Forest of Death… there weren't enough things in the Georgia swamps that tried to kill him. The thing he hated most however was training for combat in the deserts. It was the exact antithesis of everything he had ever been taught. Little cover, no real place to run to, few vantage points, hard to spot for traps… he absolutely hated it, but like everything else he got through it and graduated in spring of 2001.

He was stationed at a base not too far from where he had completed his basic training and really was just waiting. Drilling, not doing anything dangerous, just waiting. Naruto wanted to actually put his skills to actual work, but there was nothing for him to do.

In the meantime he was constantly called in for physicals, for bloodwork, for x-rays… the physicians seemingly couldn't call him in frequently enough for their tastes. There were also repeated tests held, mostly over trivial things to extreme conditioning that tested his limits such as how long Naruto could hold his breath underwater to how long he could take extreme temperatures of well over 120 F before passing out.

He thought that these things were strange, he was told that they were testing him to see how he would fare if he were inducted into some sort of special forces, they had even dropped the name of FOXHOUND once or twice, but after the tests were complete he would always be told that they required him to get actual battle experience no matter how splendid his tests were. He also took note of the fact that even though most of what he was supposed to be testing for were combat forces, he never saw a single soldier in the area for his tests. But there were many doctor and scientist looking types.

He never thought too much of it because he never felt out of the ordinary after he was done, they paid him handsomely giving him the opportunity to buy things to spoil Catherine and thank Master Miller for all that he had done. To him it was all just killing time, just steadily improving as best he could, but he was getting stir-crazy, and then in the fall his prayers were answered in a way. He was going to get to fight, although he did wish that it didn't have to occur at such a high cost.

XxX

(Fairbanks, Alaska – September 2001)

Catherine sat at the kitchen table perusing over every newspaper she could get her hands on over the last two weeks. From what she could read people were angry, people wanted the blood of those that had attacked them, they were scared of something like this occurring again. Over 2000 lives in New York City had been ended by two planes being hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center.

The claim was that they knew just where the enemy was, in Afghanistan… and they, the United States, were going there to fight them.

To fight them.

Naruto was going to fight them.

There was no other alternative to this course if everything she had been reading and seeing on TV was any indication. She wanted any sign of him not going, but he had already called Master Miller and had asked him for any advice he could give towards fighting in desert areas. Catherine listened as her father did just as Naruto requested before hanging up after telling Naruto, "Give them hell brat. And you'd better not die over there."

When he called for her the next day he had omitted any military questioning, asking her about things around the house, about how she was doing, joking with her… but she knew. He eventually told her, and she was brave about it until he had hung up… then she began to cry.

She heard he had been deployed at the end of the month. He would definitely miss his 15th birthday in October. He would probably miss her 13th birthday in December. He would probably miss Christmas too… if he ever came back at all.

"Why does it have to be you?" Catherine said quietly to herself as she pushed herself away from the table to go and turn off the TV upstairs. She just couldn't listen to it anymore, "You're just a kid, just like me. You shouldn't fight." She muttered as she left the room.

As she did, she never noticed her father walking in from the other side. Miller knew that Catherine was scared. There was plenty of reason for her to be scared. But this was just something she didn't understand. Naruto couldn't just switch off, even if he wanted to. He was meant to fight, he was made to fight. It was all he could do. Sitting at a base and rotting had probably been killing him. And he had sounded so excited when he had called to ask for advice.

He wanted it. He probably didn't even realize himself how much he wanted to fight, but anyone with experience could hear it in his voice.

XxX

(Philippines – March 2002 – Naruto: Age 15)

Naruto had wound up spending two months in Afghanistan. He had seen little action, enough to get his feet wet, enough to feel the adrenaline of being shot at, having people actively try to end his life, but it wasn't what he had really wanted. He had been one of the first in, but after that he was sent further back, with others seeing the fighting instead of him.

Then in January he was selected to move to 'support' the Armed Forces of the Philippines against Filipino Islamic Groups. Why he in particular had been selected to move from Afghanistan, with no more than four months of combat experience, he had no idea, nor did he particularly care. He was seeing more of the world and it gave him the chance to actually fight somewhere he was more suited to; a more tropical, forested terrain.

He loved it. Mostly because he was a part of the force spearheading moves into hot areas of interest. Despite being a rookie he was planted into a counter-terrorist strike force that actually saw combat with most of the insurgents of Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah. It was right where he had wanted to be from the very start.

"I hate the Pacific." Naruto heard the young man with him mutter irritably as they both were laying down in the rain wearing dark ponchos on a low roof as they looked into a gated off series of warehouses. It was now night time and the squad that Naruto was a member of had taken up positioning in Calamba, a very large Filipino city for a particular operation, "I thought that when the 9/11 stuff happened I'd be in the desert more… now I'm wet, it's miserable here. I thought we dodged the monsoon season?"

Naruto let out a chuckle, his blonde hair hidden under the hood of his operational poncho, "Well in that case I hate the desert. I'm glad I'm here instead of there. I didn't like being so out in the open most of the time. If I get caught here then it's no one's fault but my own, out there it's luck."

"Whatever ninja-boy." Naruto's partner jibed, getting a glare from Naruto's blue eyes. Even though he had binoculars at his face as he looked into the facility he could still feel Naruto burning a hole into him with his eyes, "Chill out. I swear you were way too excited to do this op kid."

Naruto rolled his eyes and started looking through his own binoculars, "D.J. you're so lazy. Would you rather be stomping through the jungles like we've been doing? Or would you like to go back to training with the Filipino Marines? That was fun."

"Fun for you." The man, D.J., chimed in as he scratched underneath his bucket hat that he had on under his poncho, "Fun because you _didn't_ get beaten up when they were going over unarmed combat… which they do a lot. I keep forgetting why I keep you around instead of sticking you with one of the others."

"Because of my endearing personality that is melting the ice around your frozen heart?" Naruto asked faking hopefulness as a joke.

D.J.'s lips quirked in amusement before setting in a stoic line, "No, more like because someone had to keep your baby Doberman ass on a leash. Good God kid, do you listen you yourself talk sometimes?"

"Why would I?" Naruto replied, wiping the rain off of his binocular lenses, "No one else ever listens to the stuff I say, so why should I?"

"Oh, looks like it's showtime." D.J. said as he saw a pair of sentries posted on the warehouse they were overlooking suddenly drop bonelessly and slide off of the roof dead. The others had obviously done their prep work of taking out any dangerous sentries with good vantage points, "Work that witchcraft of yours 'Wonderboy'." D.J. said with a grin.

"Up yours..." Naruto muttered as he formed his signature hand-seal. Witchcraft like hell, he had told the people he worked with again and again that his skills were ninjutsu not magic. In a puff of smoke that dispersed quickly in the rain created three Kage Bunshin that dropped off of the low roof and went to work on quickly cutting through the fence that kept them out of the warehouse facility. He then turned and saw D.J. glaring at him, "Oh, sorry… up yours _sir_."

D.J. had been working operations like this on and off for the last four years and at first didn't take to being stuck with some kid, no matter how highly touted he was coming off of the field in Afghanistan. Still, Naruto won him over by not making rookie mistakes and actually knowing how to operate in wooded areas as well as knowing when it was time to get his job done. The being seven years younger than him thing kind of threw him off, but who says that fifteen year olds can't shoot? It didn't take him long to realize that there was something more to his rookie when he saw what Naruto make copies of himself. He had never made more than five, but the reasoning was quite clear that Naruto was his own team, he just needed direction to get his missions done. Being Naruto's direct superior officer he was the one most suited for this.

Naruto's eyes drifted towards his Kage Bunshin who were working like well-oiled machines. Being in boot camp did wonders for the way that he ordered his clones about through mental commands. His orders were clearer, more precise, and he was able to direct standing orders that would have been blatantly clear to other real soldiers, such as to take and stay behind cover, and when in doubt keep the original alive. Whether he knew it or not he was taken from the battlefields in Afghanistan for getting too infamous for using that technique. People started to talk on all sides and he scared the civilian populace once they caught wind of the supposed strange powers of American soldiers.

D.J. had by now gotten used to Naruto's quirks, even the clones and the other powers that he knew of, "Why didn't we just doze through the fence with that blue ball thing of yours?"

Naruto glared at him out of the corner of his eye, "Because I wouldn't have made a hole with it on something so flimsy, I would have knocked the entire thing over and tipped these guys off." His clones had dispelled, their job complete, with Naruto not wanting to risk them being discovered and taking gunfire due to his feeling their pain, "The hole is set. Let's go."

"You weren't even looking at them." D.J. commented as he and Naruto dropped down from the roof they were on, boots splashing in the mud beneath them before they slipped to the opening in the fence, "How did you know they were done?"

"Mental contact." Naruto explained lamely. He didn't know, he just knew that when he told his clones to do stuff he knew if they had accomplished the task or not when they dispelled, "We're late, shouldn't we be going?"

Naruto and D.J. snuck inside the area, moving through the dark of a maze of storage containers, with D.J. leading the way. Naruto kept low as he held on to his MP5K submachine gun with its grip attachment and silencer. A group of three turned from around a corner on the same path that they were on, looking in their opposite direction, not noticing their presence.

D.J. let out a sharp whistle pattern that was meant to be met with a similar whistle, only for him to hear the men ahead begin chattering suspiciously. D.J. lifted his silenced M4A1 carbine assault rifle as Naruto lifted his own MP5K and quickly disposed of the three targets with two quick burst of fire from Naruto, one from D.J.

Naruto quickly made a trio of Kage Bunshin with the directions to hide the bodies in case of a patrol finding them. Naruto and D.J. looked at each other and nodded before continuing on. There was a need for speed on this mission. It was meant to be a shock mission meant to be quick to procure a target of interest alive.

As they came to another corner in the storage unit maze, D.J. looked past the end and saw a set of sentries posted in front of an iron gate. Leaning back out of the way to hide once more he thumped Naruto in the chest and made the sign for two, pointing in the direction that the men were in before then directly pointing up.

Naruto caught his drift and effortlessly climbed atop the storage unit with not a sound from his efforts before he began sliding on his belly over towards the iron fence where the sentries were posted directly on the other side. D.J. once again peered around the corner to see Naruto's progress and bit back a gasp when he saw Naruto standing up in a crouch, perched on the roof by the fence.

After scanning the area to see if anyone could possibly see his next action with the exception of his targets, Naruto cleared the iron gate, landing on the other side directly behind the two men who turned to see what had landed, but as they turned, Naruto struck one with a back elbow directly in the throat that dropped the man to his knees, unable to yell. The other sentry Naruto wound up grabbing tightly around the mouth to muffle him before slamming the back of his head hard into the iron gate, knocking him unconscious. Naruto then smashed his MP5K across the first enemy's temple, putting him to sleep as well.

Naruto looked over his back, towards the main warehouse building that they were meant to infiltrate and let out the same whistle D.J. had done earlier, having it reciprocated by the same man who began proceeding to the iron gate that Naruto was opening manually… Naruto then began making grandiose kung-fu movie gestures before D.J. rapped him on the back of his head, "You had a gun you know." He whispered as he once again took the lead.

"Bullets are cheap but my fists are free sergeant." Naruto replied just as silently as he followed along.

The two kept skulking along until they came across a group of seven soldiers decked out in dark ponchos similar to theirs. D.J. let out the familiar whistle to let them know they were there and as the others looked upon them they returned the corresponding whistle as Naruto fell in at the back of the line of the soldiers and D.J. took his place at the front, "Alright, we're almost done with this one. We just need to get the bastard we came for and we're out. Higgins and Carter, you're going to get the vehicles we're using to get us out of here like we planned. Jameson and Ross are going to cover you and clear the way to the front of the building."

All four men previously indicated by D.J. conveyed their understanding as they were sent off to accomplish their tasks, "What about us?" The other cloaked figure with Naruto and D.J. asked.

"Wes you and Uzumaki are with me." D.J. instructed, pointing at the door they were in sight of, "We're after Samir Bayani, you both know what he looks like. Anyone else, put them down." He pointed at Naruto, "Kid take the front, you're the best at taking people alive."

Naruto nodded and moved the closest towards the door in preparation for his role. From under his poncho, the man referred to as Wes pulled a grenade and held his finger inside of the pin and pulled it off. Naruto formed a blue orb of spinning energy in his right hand and placed it against the door, blowing it in off of its hinges and allowing Wes to throw the grenade inside as they all hid on the outside wall.

The grenade exploded immediately after passing through the open doorway, resulting in a series of yells from the dead and wounded caught in the explosion. The entranceway now cleared, Naruto rushed in and threw off his poncho to reach his combat gear quicker.

The young blonde man now had hair that reached somewhat down his neck and a black headband with a metal plate inscribed with a leaf on his forehead. He wore black boots, dark urban colored pants with a holster for a side-arm attached to his right thigh and on his left thigh a pouch that Naruto used to hold his more unconventional weapons, a black shirt that stopped at his biceps, a belt around his waist that kept all of his other normal equipment in place, a large pack on his back, and a ballistic vest over his shirt. Attached to his right arm going up to his elbow was a sleeve separate from his shirt that held slots on the top and bottom of his arm for throwing knives.

Stowing his MP5K for the moment, Naruto reached for his right thigh holster and drew his handgun, a gun he had been very familiar with, the SOCOM pistol, complete with all of its attachments.

"Why are you using your sidearm?" Wes asked Naruto as Naruto leaned against the wall by the corner leading down the hallway.

Naruto blinked and looked at Wes who had discarded his poncho as well as D.J. He smacked himself on the forehead, "Duh, you're right." Naruto then holstered his pistol and reached towards his left leg pouch, pulling out a strange black double-edged knife with the handle wrapped in white tape to help with grip. At the end of the handle was a ring for miscellaneous purposes that Naruto used to spin the weapon in a showy manner before holding it in a reverse grip in his right hand, "That's better." He said before grabbing his pistol with his left hand, holding it in proper aiming position while he had his kunai hand bracing the gun from the bottom.

Wes watched as Naruto began skulking down the hall before he spoke to D.J., "Sir I really don't get why he uses those knives of his and his other weapons."

D.J. just motioned for them to follow after Naruto per the plan as he traversed the back hallways of their target building, "Stop worrying about the kid and just watch out. He knows how to use his weapons. He wouldn't have brought them if he didn't, trust me."

With Naruto, he stopped at a corner as he heard footsteps coming from the turn he was about to take. Seeing that his shadow was in the direct way of the open hallway, Naruto switched walls to keep his back against and motioned for D.J. and Wes to hold up before they followed in his footsteps, getting near the corner he had just gotten away from.

A pair of enemy soldiers ran down the path that Naruto was waiting at the end of. Suddenly, Naruto appeared right in their path and took three shots at the man leading the way to drop him in mid-stride. The man that fell wound up obstructing his partner's view, giving Naruto to get a good start on closing the fifteen foot distance between him and the second man. Weaving aside from the man he had just shot, Naruto changed course and slammed his shoulder into the second man's body, drilling him into the wall. Naruto stabbed his kunai into one of the man's wrists, pinning it against the wall which allowed Naruto to freely knock him unconscious via pistol whip.

D.J. and Wes had seen him do this and continue on down the hall to get the target, a smirk on the sergeant's face as he followed, "What did I say? The little punk's a machine."

"I guess so." Wes said in response, seeing that Naruto didn't mind close quarters battle at all, a usually treacherous way to fight, "They would have heard the racket we've been making. Bayani's probably on his way out by now."

"He isn't getting away." D.J. replied, now that the enemy was aware of their presence it was time to move fast and get the job done while things were still probably disorganized. They soon caught up with Naruto who had managed to enter the main storage area of the warehouse where he was pinned down. The two other soldiers took cover behind a vending machine that Naruto had flipped over and lain on its side, "Are you real or a clone?"

"Clone." Naruto-clone said, "Real me is going around while I'm a diversion." It had the MP5K free from its back and began returning fire over the cover provided by the machine.

D.J. nodded, not expecting much more out of the clone than that information. Naruto always had his clones explain nothing more than what he figured they needed to know quick for his plans. Accepting that they were meant to draw fire while Naruto searched elsewhere for the target or whatever he was actually doing, D.J. and Wes began their firefight against the enemy force.

XxX

The real Naruto was sticking to the darkened ceiling of the roof, crawling on the ceiling while his clone diverted their fire. After seeing that D.J. and Wes had taken positioning to assist his clone, Naruto decided that he couldn't just leave them as they were. Naruto crawled directly over top of where the enemy had dug in, taking cover behind shelves filled with crates and whatnot, shooting through the openings, and pulled a grenade, dropping it on top of them before continuing to crawl. After the explosion silenced the gunfire he heard D.J. give the order to move up.

Naruto neared the windows near the top that allowed sunlight into the building and turned his head to look through them, growling quietly at what he saw; an armed escort getting a man in a track suit and a ballistic vest to a vehicle. He almost yelled out in joy when he saw gunfire from the other soldiers meant to go around before they entered the warehouse, "Outside! Bayani's almost to a car to get out of here!"

D.J. and Wes began running towards finding a way outside while Naruto himself dispelled his clone and kicked one of the higher windows out. Stabbing a kunai in the side of the wall outside, he tied a thin metal wire around the ring of the weapon and basically dropped to the ground, pulling it from the wall to keep for later use.

He could see two of the other members of his squad meant to cover those that were getting them wheels to leave in the middle of a shootout from their elevated position on a balcony with the enemy that was moving closer towards their own vehicle meant for escape and decided that this was as good an opportunity as any to wrap things up while their attention was away from him.

While in full run towards the vehicle that the target was trying to get to in order to escape, Naruto drew some throwing knives from the sleeve around his right arm, throwing them at the enemy and hitting two of the three men in the neck. He disposed of the last man with the kunai he had been holding onto as his presence had not been noticed until he was already upon them.

Naruto was then forced to duck behind a nearby forklift when automatic weapon fire was sent his way by their target who had by now gotten the door to his escape car open and was firing through the open window at the young blonde, "I fucking hate guns!" Naruto yelled over the sound of the bullets hitting his cover, "You've got to reload sometime asshole!" The sound of shooting at him stopped and Naruto sighed in relief until the sound of an engine started.

"Uzumaki move!"

Hearing his commanding officer yell out a warning to him, Naruto dove out from behind the forklift just in time for the car Bayani had been trying to escape in to smash into it and knock it over. Naruto's eyes flickered red momentarily before returning to normal as he got back up and ran at the passenger's side of the vehicle, "You missed! Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Naruto formed his special attack in his left hand and slammed it into the side of the car, punching a massive spiral dent in the door that sent it flying ten feet away as if it had been hit by another oncoming vehicle, turning it over and flipping it three times before resting at a stop on its roof.

Naruto watched as the rest of his squad quickly made their way to the overturned car and proceeded to finish the capture of their target Bayani, "Target secured sir!" One of the other soldiers said towards D.J. as two other cars pulled up, commandeered by the two soldiers that had been slated to do so.

After being pulled from the wrecked car, looking something of a physical mess, Bayani was quickly bound by some of Naruto's metal wire and thrown into the backseat of one of the cars as the squad filled both cars front and back and peeled out as surviving enemies tried to give chase through the warehouse grounds on foot with their firearms.

The lead car had D.J. riding shotgun, Naruto in the back with Bayani tied up and drifting in and out of consciousness between the aforementioned blonde soldier and Wes. Letting out a sigh, Wes shot a look towards the bloody Bayani, "So we're done right?"

"For now." D.J. said with a satisfied grin as he kept looking back over his shoulder in case they were being pursued, and they were not, "I wonder if we'll get some time off after this one."

The driver let out a snort of amusement, "You know they're just going to have us back stomping through the remote parts of the jungle again until we find something else to fight. I think I'd rather be in Afghanistan right now."

"Not you too… The Phillippines aren't that bad." Naruto said in disbelief, "Am I the only one of us that actually likes nature?" He then heard Bayani let out a groan of pain, "See? He hates the desert so much it hurts him just thinking about it, just like me." Getting a chuckle or two from the others allowed Naruto to calm down and lean back in his seat.

He really did love his job.

* * *

><p><span>Omake: Naruto's Favorite Food<span>

(1999 – Two Months After Naruto's Arrival – Naruto: Age 13)

Naruto sat at the kitchen table with his head down, sore after another day of getting beaten up by Master Miller and his attempt to clean up Naruto's hand-to-hand style… what had been deemed the easiest thing to teach a kid like Naruto, "So hungry…" Naruto muttered in a tired manner. It took a lot to drain him like this, saying a lot about how hard he had worked that day.

"Sorry Naruto." Catherine said apologetically as she walked out of the pantry, shaking her head, "We don't go out for groceries until tomorrow and there isn't anything good in there that's easy for me to make you. You might as well wait for dad to come in from feeding the huskies to cook." Having Naruto there really increased the amount of things that were used and eaten. The kid would pretty much eat anything except vegetables until Miller forced him to, saying he wouldn't be fed if he didn't eat them.

"It's okay…" Naruto tried to assure her before his stomach made an inhuman noise, forcing him to groan, "I can go for another hour or two without eating anything, dattebayo."

Catherine frowned and walked back into the pantry to search for anything that would tide Naruto over for the time being, "You did it again." She said informatively, "You put that thing that you say sometimes on the end of your sentence. What does it mean anyway?"

Naruto raised his head off of the table slightly as he heard Catherine rummaging through the pantry, "It means-." His stomach then let out another angry grumble that took his energy out of him, "Nevermind… I can't even think about that right now."

"Well…" He heard Catherine say before she emerged from the pantry, carrying as many little boxes as she could in her little arms, "I found these crackers." She dropped a box of saltines on the table that Naruto immediately ripped into like a jackal, "…But they're old and probably really stale." She then let out a giggle when she saw Naruto's face twist in disgust as he chewed some of them.

Naruto smacked his lips trying to get rid of the stale taste, "What else do you have?" He asked.

Catherine started dropping boxes on the table, showing him what she had picked up, "Dried tomato chips?"

Naruto stuck his tongue out and put his hand up in a thumbs down motion, "Blech, gross."

"Easter chocolates..." Naruto perked up at hearing her say chocolate, "From two years ago I think."

"Ugh… next."

"We've got these cornflakes here."

"There's no milk though, that's gross."

Catherine nodded in agreement before discarding the cornflakes and dropping her last box on the table. She noticed Naruto's eyes cut towards the box as if she had just thrown a roll of 20 dollar bills on the table before turning up to glare at her, "What?"

"Why didn't you show me this first?" He ordered her to tell him as he pointed towards a box of chicken-flavored instant ramen noodles in packaging, "I didn't even know they _had_ this." He hadn't been to any towns, let alone any supermarkets to see ramen. He had just figured he would have to chalk that little addiction up as a loss.

Catherine pouted at how Naruto was talking to her, "Those have been in the back of the pantry for like a year. You're not really going to eat that are you?" Her answer came when Naruto got up and started looking for a bowl to use, "Really? Aren't you supposed to have some common sense? You're older than me." Instant ramen wasn't Catherine's thing. She didn't like it when it had been bought hence why it sat in the back of the pantry. Now Naruto was about to eat old instant ramen. The boy was seriously weird.

That information might have stopped Naruto if he hadn't been ravenously hungry due to not eating since waking up at the crack of dawn that morning. Since he _was_ that hungry, since he had worked his ass off all day long, and since the food that had been dropped in front of his face he hadn't had in quite some time in addition to being a favorite of his, he couldn't have cared any less if he tried. As he picked up a package and prepared to make it he let out a sigh after reading the quick directions on the box… because even in another world ramen still took at least three minutes to prepare.

* * *

><p><strong>Next chapter will be a timeskip of sorts and then we'll be getting into the actual interesting story portions of what this is going to be all about.<strong> **I hope what I've got set leading up to Shadow Moses (For those of you who know what that is) works for you, because it does for me. It will answer one question at least that some people have asked about already after just one chapter; what about the Kyuubi? And it will make sense, because please believe I makes plots work people.**

**Another thing, I knew that the whole speaking in Japanese thing would be a nightmare due to it being an INTENSE work in progress as I attempt to learn a third language well enough to actually use it out loud or in public (It's very slow going by the way if anyone cares). It was never going to be happening again. That was just to convey that Naruto couldn't speak English or anything else. Ain't going to ever happen like that again yeah?**

**Upcoming, one more short incident that will actually lead to main storyline instead of just building upon Naruto actually getting real experience in this world, next chapter. Be there… or not. It's really up to you. You all have free will.**

**Later, Kenchi out. Got to work on something else at the moment.**


	3. What You Don't Know

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. If I did then I probably would have understood the storyline after playing through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty the first time. It took me two playthroughs to get the story together well enough to understand what was happening when the game got to the end, no joke, the end was kind of a mindfuck.

**Chapter 3: What You Don't Know**

* * *

><p>(Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq – June 2003 – Naruto: Age 16)<p>

It was weird. Why send them there? They hadn't finished anything in the Philippines at all, even though they always seemed to get assignments in the hottest areas possible, places where they were more or less guaranteed to fight. Naruto didn't really care though… even though he had been shot several times by now.

He would always take a kunai and dig the bullet out even when it was frowned upon by the others and keep on going. What amazed everyone was that no matter where he was hit in his arms, legs, sometimes even in his chest, he would always be right back up in one day or two as if nothing had ever happened. Tests had been run on him and sent to medical facilities all over about the ungodly pace in which his body recovered, how naturally tougher his body in general was, somehow able to stop bullets that would pass clean through a normal man from getting past the muscle and bone that they hit. His injuries never even left him a lasting scar no matter how bad it looked.

Kevlar Kid, Little Jaguar, Baby Joker, The Human Xerox… those were some of the crappier names that Naruto wound up getting for his abilities, overall personality, and battle style. He was very well known with the Filipino forces for being a one-man wrecking crew with unnatural powers. Word spread fast here just like they did in Afghanistan. A kid that could jump ten feet off of the ground, stick to anything, run on water like a deity, break through anything that was in front of him, and could make copies of himself.

He was soon after his arrival in the Philippines dispatched on solo missions that would have endangered the rest of his squad. The terrorist groups he found himself in combat with began to fear his presence because he would often strike when they were left alone and nothing suspicious happened. When everything seemed to be going their way everything would almost be guaranteed to go to hell immediately afterwards within a day or two.

He liked the way that things were in the Philippines. He was used for missions that were right up his alley. Infiltration, extraction, scouting, getting rid of traps that would at times plague the jungles… that was what he was made to do.

Being there confused him. After being in the Philippines for well over a year working to defeat the extremist groups that existed there, he and his unit were suddenly uprooted before they had even finished and directed to head towards the Middle East once more, something that pissed Naruto off supremely as his hatred of the desert and desert-like climates was well noted by now by the rest of his squad having been in Iraq for about three months by now.

Back in desert camouflage, back wearing the helmet, back sweating to death… in the open… as the walking sniper bait he knew he was.

"I hate the damn desert!" Naruto exclaimed as he walked through the large city with his squad, out on routine patrol, "And will someone turn that goddamn song off!" He said this because a hummer that was patrolling nearby was blasting "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey, "I'm sure the civilians are just as pissed off as I am."

"Come on kid." Wes said, walking behind Naruto, "Nobody hates this song."

Naruto rolled his eyes before keeping them peeled for anything strange on what was designated as his side of the street, "It's not the song, it's the fact that we're in the middle of the fucking city on patrol and the song is playing. Loud. If we weren't going to get attacked before this then if I were the insurgents I'd be putting a damn RPG right in the front seat of that hummer." He said, jerking his head in the direction of the hummer behind them.

The song then suddenly stopped in the middle of the last solo, getting D.J. to comment, "There you go Wonderboy, you happy now?"

"Very." Naruto replied before more music started up, this time the song was "Paul Revere" by the Beastie Boys, "Who the fuck brought all of these CD's?" Naruto asked belligerently, shaking his head to ignore the music.

"Someone's grouchy today." Another member of Naruto's squad jibed from the background, "We just got into a shootout yesterday Wonderboy, there aren't going to be any enemies near where we are today. If anything happens it'll go on somewhere deeper in the city, not around the outskirts like where we are."

Naruto grumbled irritably, getting a chuckle out of D.J. who was in the middle of the pack roving down the street on patrol, "Kid we're going to miss you when they take you out of here. I had some representative of that unit FOXHOUND talking to me about you today."

That got Naruto's attention, making him forget his bad mood about the combination of the heat, the monotony of his current body of work, and the music playing all at the same time, "FOXHOUND came to you?" He sounded surprised, "Why didn't I hear anything about it, and what did they want?"

D.J. knew that Naruto liked everything about FOXHOUND, he talked about how he was trained like them all the time, about how his master had trained the best operative they ever had. It really made him see how much of a kid Naruto was when he started getting like that, "What do you think they wanted kid? You do the work they specialize in. The Field Commander himself came knocking for you this morning. I told him you'd be right and ready to see him after patrol was done." The field commander was strange. He had a British accent, fair hair like Naruto did only the man obviously kept up with it better than his younger blonde counterpart did. For some reason he wore an open trench coat and no shirt, but for someone like him who was D.J. to call him on his strange attire in a warzone?

Naruto hadn't had time lately to talk about things that had been going on stateside since he had first been deployed to the Philippines, hell he hadn't had much time to rest before his unit wound up being deployed in Afghanistan. He spent his calls asking Catherine about what was new with her and how her dad was. He hadn't seen Miller or Catherine in almost two years due to how deep in the Philippines he had been while fighting. He knew that she was in Los Angeles with her mother, Miller's ex-wife, in order to start going to high school… but she still wanted him to call her, saying she'd be back during summer and Christmas Break. He did know for a fact that Catherine's mother did not like him one bit due to the few times she had answered the phone in Catherine's place, but he could deal with one person disliking him here. It was better than the majority of a village.

Miller himself had taken to training Inuit scouts for some cash and to keep himself busy. Without Naruto or Catherine around he was getting bored and needed some other way to stay active since training Naruto's head into the ground or keeping up with Catherine were no longer options.

Naruto was broken from his thoughts of home by Wes constantly trying to get his attention, "Naruto. Naruto. Naruto! Stop spacing out kid!"

Naruto blinked and snapped back into reality, "What? What's the matter?"

"I was asking you a question." Wes commented with a laugh, "So are you going to join up? With FOXHOUND I mean. You're always talking about it."

A grin came to Naruto's face, his first one of the day in fact, a rarity were days when Naruto didn't have some sort of positive energetic look on his face, "Of course I'm joining up, if that's what the guy is here for then why wouldn't I?" He said with a grin before something hit him in the head, making a loud ricochet noise as he fell to the ground.

"Ambush!" D.J. shouted as uniformed enemy troops wearing brown and black camouflage, all sporting balaclava masks over their faces, began coming into sight. Some were shooting at them from ground floor windows, but most were littering the streets, firing from vehicle cover, "Uzumaki you dead?" He asked the young blonde that he had dragged behind cover the second everything kicked off.

"No…" Naruto muttered as his helmet had been knocked from his head. The impact from the bullet didn't penetrate his cranial protection but it forced a flesh wound on his head that would heal within an hour or two, "Who are these guys?" The uniforms didn't look anything like what they were used to facing on the battlefield. These guys were a completely different force altogether, "Who picks a fight with the U.S. Army?"

D.J. gave Naruto a deadpan look and was about to rattle off a list dozens of names long before the sounds of bullets ricocheting off of their vehicular cover rang out, "Doesn't matter who they are, just start shooting!" He said as he began returning fire with his assault rifle.

Naruto heard the rattle of the enemy's guns as he made sure his MP5K was ready for combat, "Those sound like AK's."

D.J. gave a smartass scoff, "Way to go kid, that narrows down the search of who we're fighting to over 80% of the rogue fighting forces in the world."

"Not AK-47's!" Naruto snapped irritably as if he didn't know that stating an enemy had an AK-47 didn't mean a thing. He had heard that gun fire tons of times in the Philippines, he knew what an AK-47 sounded like, "The guns are more recent than that. Like they're not as strong. They're like…" He popped his head from cover and took a quick shot at one of the enemies scrambling between cover, gunning him down, "…AKS-74u's." He deduced after getting a good look at the gun as it fell from the dead man's hands.

D.J.'s eyes widened, "These guys are Russian. What the fuck are Russian soldiers doing here?"

Naruto put his hand on D.J.'s shoulder and took a deep breath, "I'm about to go find out." He made a Kage Bunshin, mentally ordering it to stay and help D.J. and follow his orders, "Take care of my clone and take these! You'll need 'em more than me!" Naruto told D.J, dropping his supply of grenades for his use. As he ran from behind their cover and dodged bullets as he reached an alley that led him away from the fire.

D.J. watched Naruto scale a wall in the alley and take to the roofs, "Wait kid get your ass back here! You insubordinate little punk!" He turned to Naruto's clone who was obediently firing on the enemy, "Damn it!" He grabbed the clone by the front of its gear, "You're with me, we're hooking with the others and we're going call in for reinforcements! It's time to coordinate this clusterfuck!" The clone covered D.J. as he went to meet up with the rest of the squad, the sergeant hoped that they were doing better than Naruto probably was at the moment.

XxX

Naruto managed to reach the three-story building that a lot of the gunfire originated from and said a small prayer to whatever deity was out there in Japanese. Naruto needed more concentrated firepower for what he was about to do… or maybe he just needed to use some shock tactics and hope he was fast enough to get the job done.

Yeah the second one seemed more up his alley.

He took off his ballistic vest and his desert camo shirt, putting the former back on for protection in case he wound up being shot and so that he could use his throwing knives from his special sleeve if the situation called for it. Naruto pulled out a flashbang grenade and kissed it before pulling the pin and throwing it into the window beneath him, 'Twelve shots…' Naruto thought as he drew his SOCOM pistol for more precise shooting.

Naruto rolled over the side of the building, holding onto the ledge with one hand to swing himself through the open window right after the flashbang grenade went off, giving Naruto the advantage over the blinded and deafened victims that had taken the damage. Naruto quickly put three rounds into two men in the office building looking setup with a block of desks in the center of the large room, all covered by cubicle walls making a large piece of cover in the middle of the room.

With nine shots left, Naruto hit another man with a shot to the back as he stumbled by a doorway, yelling in Russian. The man fell through the doorway and down a flight of stairs leaving four more men on the same floor as Naruto. Naruto quickly formed a Kage Bunshin that sprinted over to the stairway, using its MP5K instead of its SOCOM.

As the original decided to fire his pistol with his right arm and pelt his remaining enemies with his throwing knives using his left hand, the clone Naruto wound up mowing down a group of soldiers that were making to go upstairs to check the ruckus. Emptying its entire 30 round magazine into five soldiers that clustered together, the clone pulled out an extra clip to reload. That was when it met its end.

The original Naruto let out a deep gasp of pain and clutched his chest tightly, feeling as if he had just been stabbed right through his breastbone. What a way for his clone to go. He could hardly breathe, "Sometimes I swear I miss my old clones…" He stood back up, trying to put the pain of being stabbed in the chest in the back of his mind, "The dude that stabbed my clone was fast…" Naruto said to himself as he whipped around towards the doorway his clone was killed in, SOCOM ready to fire. Naruto kept his eyes on the doorway as he moved behind a cubicle wall for cover.

"Typical man…" Naruto heard a female voice say in a Russian accent, "He thinks that anyone that shows skill in combat must be a man. Sorry to disappoint you."

Naruto's eyes never left that doorway, waiting for any hint of movement to come through it so that he could shoot it down, "That's not why I thought you were a guy just because you're good." Naruto asserted, "Not a whole lot of girls I've known that fight would run up to someone and stab them."

"I don't waste bullets on weaklings." The girl said again in that particular Russian brogue, "But you're not weak so I guess I'll be getting serious." With that a flashbang grenade flew into the room, forcing Naruto to turn around, shut his eyes, and take cover behind the cubicle wall while he held his ears as well to keep from going deaf.

Naruto remembered from his clone's death that this girl liked to move when opponents were off-guard and it was a good thing he was able to dredge up that particular memory because he was forced to roll out of the way just as a knife implanted itself in the cubicle wall where his throat had been. She then ducked back out of Naruto's sight as he fired three shots that missed.

Okay, it had been a while since he had been in a one-on-one fight. As a matter of fact he hadn't trained for one-on-one battles since he had stopped dueling with Master Miller. He was so used to fighting as a team against teams that he hoped he wasn't rusty lest it come back to bite him in the ass.

Still, he had gotten a good look at his attacker when he had taken his shots at her. She wore camouflage pants in the same pattern as the men of whatever unit Naruto had been fighting, and had short silver hair. She wore full brown gloves, a tight black and white striped shirt with brown suspenders, and in her other hand he swore he saw a pistol that looked just like his, except hers had no silencer.

"You're a very young soldier." He heard the girl say from the other side of the room. Both were at a stalemate at the moment, neither trying to stick their head out lest it get taken off. Naruto took this time to eject the magazine from his pistol and reload it with a new full one, "Are you even old enough to vote in your country?" She asked in a taunting way.

Naruto was so sick of people talking about him because of his age. There was a good reason he was there, if he wasn't good enough that his age didn't matter then he would never have been allowed on the battlefield, "Whatever, I'm 16, you couldn't be much older than me. I'd say three years max." He tried to call her out again so he could judge where she was by the sound of her voice while he made a Kage Bunshin, "You don't look like any Iraqi insurgent I've ever shot at. Why are you even here?"

He heard the girl let out a chuckle in response, "Well I'm 18 just so you know. And don't judge me by your own standards, I've grown up around nothing but combat in my life." It was as if he could feel the smirk she had on her face as she answered his next question, "And insurgents can get mercenary contracts set up as well. They've already paid us for the year."

"I knew it was mercenaries! Russian mercenaries!" Naruto exclaimed as he had managed to pinpoint the girl's position by now at the direct opposite end at the block of cubicles. Freelance military work had been pretty huge since the 70's as Miller had told Naruto of his times as a free roaming gun-for-hire. It was actually how he met Big Boss. Mercenaries were the entire driving force behind the Outer Heaven Uprising and the Zanzibar Land Incident that wound up holding the world as a nuclear hostage in 1995 and 1999. It wasn't that surprising to find them fighting here as well.

Naruto and his clone moved on both sides of the block in an attempted pincer move. Naruto was forced to duck into a cubicle space to avoid two shots from her pistol. The girl went to the other side and met Naruto's clone just as it turned the corner to pursue her, sticking the barrel of the gun in the clone's shoulder and firing she managed to dispel it just as she took a punch that hit her in the cheek, sending her stumbling back until she was able to steady herself.

The pain of the gunshot injury to his clone felt like a bullet had imbedded itself into his shoulder. It forced Naruto to bite down on his left hand hard enough to draw blood in order to keep from letting out a cry of pain while the girl marveled over actually seeing another Naruto that she had killed/critically injured disappear in front of her eyes.

She rubbed her bruised cheek and began to speculate, "A young soldier that can make copies of himself, able to fight alongside him as indistinguishable replications." She then remembered Naruto's spiky blonde hair and distinct whisker-marks were also a part of the description she received for this particularly dangerous U.S. soldier, "You are Naruto Uzumaki aren't you? My father's unit has been warned about you by our clients. The famed, 'Golden Weed of the West'."

Hearing such a nickname, Naruto forgot all about his pain for the time being, "And who in the hell came up with that stupid-ass nickname?" He asked in a perturbed tone of voice. He was getting sick of all of these loser epithets for him. When was someone going to call him something cool like the 'Yellow Flash' had in his home village of Konoha?

He heard the girl's laughter again and frowned. Even in this world girls laughed at him, "The Iraqi insurgents came up with it. They call you that because of your hair color, hair style, your powers of replication, and the fact that supposedly you're damn hard to kill for good."

"Baby you've got no idea!" Naruto shouted as he stood up on the desk in the cubicle, giving him the chance to look over all of the cubicle walls. He saw the Russian girl and took five shots at her, missing each time as she ran and dove behind a desk near the doorway she had originally appeared through. Naruto growled at not seeing anything behind the desk worth shooting at, being forced to duck back down and sit on the desk against the cubicle wall when she started blindfiring in his direction, 'Man this girl is good! I can't get close without making myself a sitting duck! I only have one grenade on me too, I left the rest with D.J. because he would have needed them more!' Damn him and his nature to try protecting his friends.

"Don't call me 'baby' American." He heard the girl call out to him, sounding rather upset at what he had labeled her as, "My name is Olga Gurlukovich, remember it because it will be the last name you ever hear."

"Whatever… I'm not American bitch." Naruto replied, still sitting on the desk against the cubicle wall. He leaned to the side and grabbed the nearby heavy office chair that was with him, "Hear this." He then picked up the chair and stood back up as he hurled it across the room behind the desk where Olga was taking cover. A crash and a shriek of shock/pain told him that it had hit home, forcing a mischievous laugh from him as he got off the desk and ran from behind cover just in time to see Olga stand up holding her head that had a nasty bruise on it, "Count the shells sweetie!" Naruto then opened fire with four shots.

Olga dodged all four of them due to Naruto's firing pattern with his SOCOM, although one grazed her shoulder. The bullet grazing her shoulder threw off her own aim when she took three shots at Naruto. Forcing him into a side roll to avoid getting properly caught in her gun's sights.

Olga grit her teeth and fired at Naruto repeatedly, taking this chance at getting the real Naruto in the open to try and put him down for good. This made her realize the real difference between Naruto and the clones he sent at her before. The real one had all of the craftiness and snap-decision ability. The clones would just follow his will, unable to freestyle any kind of attack pattern or come up with any combat variable. The clones had all of his abilities and physical traits, but none of the mind to use it. They were generally soulless bodies.

Meanwhile, Naruto was sick of getting shot at and rolled himself into a cubicle, bumping his head on a desk for his trouble. The shooting stopped and Naruto heard footsteps before silence reigned. Naruto wasn't stupid however, and he could see Olga's shadow on the floor on the other side of the cubicle wall leading to the open space. Naruto rolled his eyes and kicked the wall of the cubicle as hard as he could, knocking her off of the wall she had been leaning against.

Olga had to admit, Naruto did not fight like anyone normal, 'Who in the world trained someone to fight like this?' He used anything in his environment he could see that might be able to help him, even the environment itself.

She left the cubicle that Naruto effortlessly discovered her in only to find Naruto swinging from his own cubicle aiming a kick at her. Olga backrolled out of the way, scared of the speed at which he was moving. Naruto tried low kicks and stomps to stop her, but Olga kept rolling, eventually ending up on her back, sliding on the linoleum floor aiming her pistol at Naruto.

Three shots caught a surprised looking Naruto in the chest until he disappeared in smoke, an office chair riddled with bullet holes falling to the ground in his place, 'What in God's name?' She thought to herself, picking herself back up to her feet as Naruto aimed his gun over the wall of the nearest cubicle and fired at her.

She dodged as none of the shots were on point and rushed him directly, sick of fighting him and just sick of his face in general. Just as she made it to the cubicle wall she had to get by to get to Naruto himself he came flying around the corner with the same kind of finish in mind.

The two froze as they stood out in the open directly in front of one another. Naruto had his gun barrel set right against Olga's left eye while her own was pressed right against the side of his head at his ear, "Well how about that?" Naruto said, slightly out of breath. The two were frozen in place lest the slightest move set off the other to bring this to a bloody mutual conclusion.

"Da." Olga said sweating bullets, no pun intended, "So what do we do now?" She asked Naruto, becoming slightly unnerved as a grin took shape on his face, 'Who would possibly be amused by a situation like this?' She asked herself mentally.

"That's a good question." Naruto said with a lift in his voice before his grin turned to a soft smile as he was able to get a good look at Olga up close now that all of the running and shooting had stopped. Despite the tomboy haircut she was actually quite cute, "Heh, you know you're really pretty." He said, completely changing the subject.

"Pig."

"I'm not a pig." Naruto said with a deadpan look on his face, "I'm 16 years old and the only decent conversation I've had with a girl is with one two years younger than me that is currently thousands of miles away from here. I can't say you're pretty when you have a gun to my head? It might keep me alive here." Catching a bullet with his skull was not on Naruto's list of things to do before he kicked the bucket because it would probably be the reason he kicked the bucket in the first place, "You could say that I'm a handsome devil. I can guarantee that I'd think twice about shooting you if you did."

Olga just glared at him hotly, "How can someone so skilled be such a… such a…" She let out a grunt of annoyance before muttering curses in Russian, not knowing what to say, "I don't even know what to call you! You fight so well and yet your attitude is so careless!"

"It doesn't matter how seriously I take things." Naruto replied, "Being all stone cold and uptight isn't going to stop someone from wanting to pull a bullet in my head." His eyes drifted towards the gun pointed at him, "Like right now."

"Well we can't just sit here all day." Olga snapped at him. She had come to this building with twelve of her father's men, all of whom Naruto killed in a matter of moments. The squad outside pressing the close range attack could help her, but they were in a firefight with the U.S. soldiers they had been meant to engage in the first place. This lone American soldier came to the heart of the ambush and put a stop to the most dangerous portion of the attack. She had to get out before her father's men decided to cut loose and retreat, because she would more than likely be left behind were that the case.

Naruto let out a chuckle and licked his lips… God he hated how dry the damn desert was, "Well to be quite honest with you in our little shootout just now I kind of lost track of how many times I fired at you over the wall. I think you did too when you were shooting me in the open and when you were running away from my kicks." Good on her to dodge him for as long as she did. He didn't think normal people got that fast. She was just as fast as Master Miller was, but he guessed that dodging bullets for a living gave you some kind of latent ability to do so.

"So?" Olga urged him to get to the point.

"I don't know how many bullets I have, and neither do you." Her eye not covered by his gun widened at what he was suggesting, "One of us could be holding a gun with an empty clip… I think you know where I'm going with this."

"You're insane!" She shouted at him.

Ignoring her questioning of his sanity, Naruto kept talking, "On the count of three we both fire our guns. Whoever walks away walks away."

Olga held back a nervous gulp as her finger shook on the trigger, "And if neither of us walk away?"

Naruto shrugged, "If you kill me then at least I'll have the sight something pleasant in my mind when you splatter it all over the floor. So you ready?" He asked, his grin coming back to the forefront, "Help me count. One…"

"Two…" Olga said, the gun against Naruto's head shaking intensely.

"Three!" Both of them shouted simultaneously.

CLICK!

Both Naruto and Olga stood in place after both pulling the trigger on their guns and getting nothing out of it. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment before slowly backing away from each other. Olga put her pistol away and drew a knife while Naruto put his away and pulled out one of his kunai, both still backing away from each other tentatively.

Naruto looked down at his pistol and held back a twitch in his eyebrow as the slide of the pistol was back, letting him know that there were no bullets left. Looking up at Olga, he saw that she had found the same problem with her pistol, 'Wow... this is embarrassing.'

Olga then put one hand in the air as a disarming gesture and Naruto did the same. When she flipped her knife so that she was holding it by the blade he did the same with his kunai, smiling at her as it seemed that they'd both walk away from this fight. He thought that right up until she smirked and suddenly pushed a button on the handle of her knife that shot a bullet through the bottom of it at him.

Naruto saw the bullet coming in slow motion seemingly as he moved his weapon arm in front of him, as if he could block the bullet with the kunai in his hand. This was not to be however as the shot deposited itself through Naruto's vest right into his chest. Almost as a reflex he stepped forward, closing the short distance between himself and Olga and let go with one slash of his kunai.

Olga let out a scream of pain as Naruto's kunai cut her diagonally, starting from over her right eye across the bridge of her nose and down her cheek stopping on the left side of her mouth. She stumbled back, tasting her own blood yet grateful that he didn't get either of her eyes, "You bastard!"

"You bitch!" Naruto spat back venomously as he held his chest. He could feel where the bullet was and the blood seeping down his torso. Getting screwed over by a fucking pretty face, he should have known better, but in his defense he didn't even know that weapons like that were out there. How ninja-like of her to have a weapon like that on her, "Okay, I'm not dead, you're not dead. You shot me… I probably scarred you for life. Can we just call it even and be done already?"

Olga saw nothing but red, literally and figuratively, "I'll kill you!" She then came directly at him with her knife, stabbing at him with intent to disembowel while Naruto held his kunai in his usual reverse grip for versatility. He tried to find an opening to stab her, but she seemed to get faster and more reckless, making it hard to pick his spot. All he could do was backstep and wait. She'd screw up eventually, fighting the way she was.

That was what he thought until after one ill-attempted stab from Olga, her knife got close enough to get at his belt, more specifically the grenade on his belt… even more specific than that the pin of the grenade on his belt. She knocked the grenade free while pulling the pin out.

Both of them stared in horror as the pinless grenade fell to the office floor. Taking a nanosecond to lock eyes, both Naruto and Olga had the same idea and dove, jumping out of the open windows to their side just in time to be blown further away from the building as they flew out of the third story. Olga's lighter body flew across the street, landing on the roof of a car, caving it in slightly with the force of her body.

Naruto was not so lucky.

He also flew most of the most of the way across the street, but unlike Olga his body hit the ground and rolled harshly and helplessly until it hit an iron gate on the other side of the street, an iron gate with points jutting out along the lower portion, thus Naruto wound up impaling himself through the back with these iron points, slumping over lifelessly as his MP5K came unhooked from his back and flew through the bars of the gate away from him.

Olga was the first to move. Rolling off of the roof of the car she landed on, she held her ribs, feeling that she had injured more than a few from how gingerly she had to walk. She looked over at Naruto and saw the blood pooling under him from his seated position, also taking notes of the points on the fence he was against. She was about to smirk, believing she had won when she saw his arms start to move as he slowly pushed himself off of the points that had impaled him, falling face-first onto the dusty ground.

'How is he still alive after that?' She wondered in amazement when she saw him lift his head and give her a smirk with blood trailing from his lips. Seeing the still smiling look on his face she wanted to go over and finish him, but she lost her knife in the explosion and her gun had no bullets. She had left her pack with most of her magazines inside the building they had been fighting in and she used all the ones on her person during the battle.

Naruto pulled himself to his feet with the support of a nearby car holding him up as he started walking slowly towards her, "I'm not that easy to kill…" He said, spitting his own blood on the ground.

What was she to do now? If she tried to fight him with her hands he still had his knife on him, he would kill her... especially since that blue ball of light in his other hand that had formed out nothing didn't look too inviting either. But he was so injured, running away from him as he was would kill her pride.

There were more important things at the moment though, as Olga could hear shouting for Naruto's name getting ever closer, "You're lucky Uzumaki. You win today." She said before retreating from the area before she was captured. She would reconvene with the rest of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries currently deployed at a safehouse in town, she could make it that far.

"Yeah… real lucky." Came the sarcastic reply, "Come back and try me again anytime beautiful…dattebayo." Naruto said as he simply watched her go, not able to chase her or even aim that kunai in his hand straight as he was. The Rasengan he had formed was mostly bluster since after getting shot in the chest he wasn't sure he could raise either arm high enough to do anything.

Between the bits of shrapnel in his backside from the grenade, the thirty foot fall to the hard ground, the concussive damage of the grenade itself, the bullet in his chest, and the puncture wounds in his torso he wasn't in any shape to throw a Frisbee, let alone chase down an enemy.

Naruto saw familiar camouflage and stuck his hand up in a thumbs up gesture before sliding to the ground against the car, showing the soldiers just how hurt he was.

"Kid!" Naruto heard D.J.'s voice faintly say as he saw a blurry figure rush over to him, "Don't worry kid you're going home. Someone get the kid some help!" Naruto heard last before his vision went dark.

XxX

Naruto was placed in a helicopter while a man with long blonde hair and an open coat with nothing underneath watched, shaking his head, "And to think I was about to ask the boy if he wished to join FOXHOUND with me today. A shame. His abilities would have been very valuable to us. His replication abilities, his strength, speed, agility, his skill… everything he could do was confirmed by the men here who have seen it firsthand. He would have fit right in." He turned to the man standing next to him, "What do you think Ocelot?"

Next to him was a man looking just like a cowboy from a spaghetti western. He had a grey mustache and long grey hair that was beginning to show signs of balding. His duster, gloves, clothing, right down to his boots and spurs, even his choice of weapon that he spun around on his finger; a Colt Single Action Army Revolver, they all screamed cowboy, "I'd say don't count the kid out just because of a few bumps and bruises. Wounds heal Boss. I wouldn't let him go so easily. He would still be useful… especially to _them_." He finished, saying 'them' with disgust.

"What makes you think that's not where he's going right now?" The man Ocelot referred to as 'Boss' said in his British accent. He let out a sigh, "He's the only soldier that was wounded badly enough here today to be medevaced out of here. He's definitely gone for good. Out of my hands." He then began to walk away, "Oh, and don't call me 'Boss' Ocelot. At least not yet… I haven't earned that title yet. Use my codename."

A small laugh came from the cowboy-looking Ocelot as he followed behind, "Whatever you say Liquid." With their prime reason for even being there in Iraq gone, the two members of FOXHOUND made to leave the area of operations.

XxX

Naruto's eyes opened, not inside of a medical tent, not even inside of a medical facility. It was outside, with him laying in shallow water, staring up at a smoky sky, with burning trees surrounding him.

Fuck.

He was there again? There's no way he died. He didn't feel like he was going to die. He didn't even feel like his life was in too much jeopardy even though he hadn't been hurt that bad in almost two years of combat. He still hadn't been as hurt as he had been during his fight with Sasuke, his ultimate measure for the amount of damage he had ever taken in one go.

"I am _not_ dead again." Naruto muttered disbelievingly, sitting up to come face to face with the same ghostly man he had seen the last time he had been in this plane of existence, "Hey Sorrow." Naruto said in a basically casual greeting. If he _was_ dead then there was no need to piss off the warden so to speak.

The man grinned right back as if expecting that reaction, _**"Hello little Naruto. I've been watching you… though you aren't so little anymore are you?"**_

Naruto shrugged his shoulders as he continued to sit in his shallow water, "I know I didn't die… I know what almost dying feels like because I almost died twice. That wasn't it."

"_**Correct you are neither dead nor dying like the last time we met face to face."**_ The Sorrow revealed to Naruto, seeming to take amusement in the young man not knowing just what his reason for being there, _**"Now that you have had a true taste of battle, now that your hands have been stained with blood, how do you feel about war? About yourself?"**_

That question took a moment of thinking. He had actually fought full-scale battles, he had actually ended lives. He had felt his heart leap out of his chest in fear of death and he had seen others do the same. He tried to defeat his opponents and leave them alive when he could, but like had just been reaffirmed in his mind with Olga, that kind of thinking in the wrong situations will get you hurt or killed, "Well I don't know. I feel bad when I sit back and think about it. I killed people, how am I supposed to feel, happy? But it was either them or me, there was no other option most of the time. It's kind of hard to take people alive when they're shooting at you from 50 yards away."

Naruto took prisoners when he could. In the Philippines he was probably the most merciful of his squad, choosing to knock out enemies when he had the opportunity to get close enough to do so. As a matter of fact, Olga was the very first person he had ever fought in what could be considered close quarters that he couldn't just knock out with ease; gun or knife on her person or not. Naruto let out a bitter chuckle and held the places in his back where he knew he had been punctured by the iron gate, "I guess if I'm going to keep fighting the way I do I'd better be ready to get hurt a lot more often huh?" He then looked up and focused on The Sorrow, "When I have the choice I won't kill anyone. I'm better than that." He pointed his thumb up to the metal plate on his headband, "I won't ever take the easy way out. I don't back down."

"_**That is a rather large boast."**_ The Sorrow floated back down in front of Naruto again, _**"See that you don't… and I don't want you to have to see me again so don't go dying in battle."**_ He lifted his hand the way he did when he sent Naruto to that world in the first place, remembering how it had felt like The Sorrow stopped his heart when he touched his shoulder, _**"I will still be watching you. Don't disappoint me."**_ Instead of grabbing Naruto's shoulder he flicked him in the forehead and once again Naruto saw black.

XxX

(Unknown Location – Late Summer/Early Fall 2003 – Naruto: Age 16)

When he regained self awareness he couldn't see and his head was swimming. He could make out words however, just barely though.

"…Discovering the origin of the subject's unique abilities and traits has been a slow process. Despite finding that the healing, the reinforced physical condition that allows him to survive horrible combat conditions, and the stronger physical frame that makes him seem structurally denser than normal people are all genetic features we have been unable to discover the genes that allow his ability to form doppelgangers, stick to surfaces, or channel a kinetic source of energy for exterior purposes."

Naruto soon wished he had never awoken once he found himself on a lab table, held in place by literally having been bolted down. It was strange that he wasn't feeling any pain at first until he heard a garbling older woman's voice as he returned to consciousness, "The subject is awakening. The sedatives have worn off prematurely once again, another testament to his abnormal and incredible physiology."

Oh. That explained it. He was fighting off the sedatives. That made sense.

Wait, why the hell was he on sedatives? He felt like he had just woken up from a coma. If he had been in a coma from the wounds he suffered in his battle with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries then wouldn't sedatives keep him from ever waking up? Unless that was the point. Wait, did whoever was speaking just call him a subject? As in a test subject?

And as he came to, Naruto found himself looking directly at a woman in a lab coat with red hair that had streaks of grey in it. He could see the age on her face and her eyes were extremely cold, looking at him as if he were subhuman, as if he were only good by way of an analysis purpose. He had seen eyes like that before. He had seen Orochimaru look at him much in the same way the few times he had been close to the man, only now there was nothing he could do as this woman looked at him, "Who are you? What do you want? Where am I?" Naruto said in a raspy voice. His throat was extremely dry and he was naked. That second one was not a good sign of his current status.

"Well I guess I can tell you that." The woman said in a matter-of-factly tone. As she walked towards a table full of medical instruments Naruto noticed that he was in a laboratory. He was in a laboratory, and he couldn't move. That told him right there that things were not going to be going his way today. As the woman picked up a syringe and filled it with some kind of liquid she spoke again, "My name is Dr. Clark."

For being in front of a doctor he didn't feel very safe. This woman reminded him of the strange doctors that oversaw his physical tests during his initial army training. As a matter of fact the way she scrutinized his every feature it reminded him of that exact situation. Like they weren't seeing him as the person he was, like they weren't even seeing him for the body he represented, but for what they could take from him and use later. As if he were a dispenser of some kind, meant to be used for whatever he had inside that was worthwhile.

Naruto started breathing more erratically, his inability to move was getting to him, and the sedatives really were wearing off, because he could feel where he was bolted to the table and the places didn't exactly tickle, "You didn't answer my other questions." He said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. He knew he was screwed.

"Where you are isn't important." Dr. Clark said as she reached out a grabbed a hold of Naruto's face, studying his features, "You're supposed to be of Japanese descent… I don't see it." She said, sounding disappointed in this. Naruto bared his teeth at her and cursed in Japanese, he could swear her lips turned to a smile under her surgical mask, "That's much better. Now as to what I want. I've already taken your blood samples after seeing the limits of your impressive healing ability. By the way feel grateful that you were not awake for those experiments. But I'm in luck as this one actually required you to be awake."

Naruto eyed the syringe in her hand as it got ever closer to his throat, "Experiments?"

"Yes." Dr. Clark said as if she were discussing the weather, "I'm going to see if your body can actually dull the senses of pain by intentionally provoking the pain receptors of your brain and your nerve endings. It's to be incorporated in my gene study research. We've been watching you for a while and your soldier genes are incredible, we've never seen anything like them before. Your natural abilities mixed with those of Big Boss or any other great soldier would be a terrifying combination. I can't wait to compound my research, but I can't until I discover how to duplicate your unique combat abilities such as your replication." She then blinked and let out an embarrassed laugh, "Oh I guess I was rambling again, here we go." She said injecting the needle directly into the immobilized Naruto's neck.

"What kind of doctor are you?" Naruto growled once the syringe left his throat.

"The best." Dr. Clark said, raising an eyebrow, "I've been doing this for decades… but why aren't you-?" At that moment, Naruto let out a horrible scream of pain, "Oh there it is. I thought the sedatives were blocking the pain for a second." She said to herself as if Naruto's continuous yells didn't bother her, "The pain will not subside until you lose consciousness I'm afraid. Though it seems that you share the same propensity for pain as everyone else does."

Naruto screamed at the top of his lungs, unable to budge an inch despite his entire body feeling as if a blade were being raked across him, "You sadistic bitch! You can't do this to people! This is illegal!"

"Oh dear." Dr. Clark said as she walked towards the door to leave the room, "The law? The laws are in the hands of the Patriots. You don't have any rights here." She said as she pulled down her surgical mask with a smirk, "I need to check something with my main guinea pig, his reaction to being injected with your healing genes. I don't need to be here for all of this screaming. I'll just watch back the videotape of your reaction to the serum and compound my information from there… possibly with the sound off. You're very noisy."

"GO FUCK YOURSELF WITH A MACHETE!" Naruto screeched horribly as Dr. Clark left the room shutting an iron automatic door behind her, leaving him alone. His mind couldn't work like this, it wasn't like he was injured and feeling pain like this, it was just sheer pain. There was nothing he could do to relieve it from his system. He had never been this helpless before in his entire life.

"Such a vulgar little soldier boy." He heard her say from outside but he couldn't care less about any retorts from her. Getting under her skin was not going to get rid of this feeling under his.

'Who is this bitch?' Naruto thought to himself as he continued to convulse in pain. With each jolt of pain his vision flittered back to scenes of him being examined by groups of doctors again and again, and he always remembered seeing those eyes there, 'H-Has she been watching me the entire time? But how did she get to me? D.J. was there! I saw him, I heard him! How the hell did I get captured?' This was something akin to what his last teacher when he was a ninja, Jiraiya, told him about the man Orochimaru, doing things like this to others. The Dr. Clark woman had a similar look in her eyes.

Where in the world was he? Where could he possibly be where something like this was allowed to happen to him? He was an enlisted soldier, he had been seen by his own squad before he woke up here. People had to know where he was. Someone had to be aware of his lack of presence anywhere. And then he realized… outside of his unit that was probably still in Iraq there were only two people who knew enough about him to care that he was missing, and in this case they wouldn't have been told he had been wounded in battle if he was on the right train of thought because then they would have wanted to hear from him.

Wherever he was it was somewhere that no one would be coming for him. He had known of the testing and experiments and everything like that from his training with Miller informing him of such. Was there someone in with the U.S. government with enough pull to get him for themselves? He didn't understand.

His screams echoed throughout the room and probably out into the hall outside for as loud as he was. There was nothing he could do, he couldn't budge his arms or legs whatsoever. He didn't know how long he stayed yelling, be it minutes or hours, but his anger and desperation started to grow as he bit down on his lip, easily drawing blood with his sharpened canines.

'I need to get out! I need to get out of here!' An orange aura began to cover his body, but quickly grew to be red and bubbling as it took the form of a one-tailed fox around his body, 'I'm not going to die here! I'm nobody's test subject! I don't belong to anyone!' He started gruesomely pulling his arms free of the bolts. Painful? Of course, but when your entire body is already suffering do you really care about inflicting what could be perceived as less pain in order to try and alleviate what you're already feeling?

The thick screws holding him to the table stuck fast though, and Naruto found himself getting angrier and drawing on more power. Naruto's physical features began to change rapidly. The color of his eyes turned from blue to blood red, his whisker marks grew deeper and darker, his nails elongated to claws, and he began to writhe angrily about, not accepting his fate of being captured for a moment, growling angrily almost like an animal.

The bolts stuck in his arms and legs began to creak and give way as a contingent of armed soldiers entered the room, and stared at the living embodiment of a demon, "What the hell?"

One of the soldiers began to choke on the air in the room as if it were stinging not only just his throat but his entire body and it seemed to be emanating from Naruto. He took aim at the demonic teenage boy, preparing to fire, but was prevented from doing so, "You can't kill the subject! He's important to the continuation of Dr. Clark's research!"

He should have let him shoot… it might have given them a chance to get lucky and hit him in the eye to kill him.

Naruto eventually pulled himself free and landed on the floor, crouching on all fours like a beast as he snarled at the men in front of him.

"Switch to non-lethal methods! Detain the subject!"

The non-lethal sentiment was not reciprocated by the 'subject', as the three tails made of chakra around Naruto's body lashed out and knocked two of the four men in the room away while holding another two in place as Naruto shoved a pair of hands in a knife-hand motion through the captured men's throats as if his claws were made of iron. Out in the hall the two men sitting on the ground against the wall where Naruto batted them picked up their automatic weapons and took aim, but before anything could be done two of Naruto's red chakra tails stabbed them directly through the torso, cracking the wall behind them as they had been impaled.

As he walked out into the hall Naruto faintly, with what little comprehension and rational thought he had left, recognized a loud siren going off throughout the entire facility of wherever he was. As he saw soldiers charging down the length of the hall at him the only thing he could think of was killing the Dr. Clark bitch… it was as if it was all that drove him. Naruto unleashed a terrible roar that fired a shockwave, hitting the incoming soldiers and tearing up the walls due to the power of it.

Naruto then took off running through the halls, trying to find some way out or someone to get in his way so that he could cut them down as well. Getting out or running into whoever did this to him… either of those two things would be delightful in the half-feral mind of Naruto.

"What's causing all of this mess?" Naruto's head snapped around behind himself as he heard more boots hitting the ground running towards him, as well as another soldier's voice, "Is it one of Dr. Clark's damn gene therapy experiments, the one that looks like a damn robot ninja? She's been injecting her main subject with all kinds of new stuff these days!"

"No, I think that one got away. His damn drugs wore off… the bitch gave him a cybernetic exoskeleton to boot. Forget about her she's dead anyway." Another soldier's voice spoke up from the same place. Dr. Clark was dead… good. He hoped it hurt her as much as she hurt him. In the meantime Naruto's new targets were located, "The source of the fucked up experiment's new genes broke out too. He shouldn't be that-. Whoa." He heard the voice say in shock as he continued to bear down on them. Getting closer now, just a little bit further.

"What kind of monster did all of this?" One voice said fearfully, and then the sight of uniforms came into Naruto's view… and they didn't see him coming at all. Good. Naruto let out one loud roar and saw the fear in their eyes as they turned to face him. It was intoxicating. This was what even more of the Kyuubi's power could do for him? It terrified him that he was so vicious but at the moment he couldn't care. They captured him. They used him in their stupid experiments. They had this coming… or so the voice in his head kept telling him.

As he began to rip into them mercilessly he scoffed at their desperate attempts to hold onto their weapons. He didn't need a weapon like this. His hands were his weapons.

XxX

(Naruto's Mindscape)

It continued on and on. Naruto kept cutting through the enemy with his strange chakra, most of the time before they could even fight off their fear of him to take aim. He found his way outside of the base and tore into the woods after killing dozens of the fools that had tried to stop him. It was like a drug to the source of Naruto's bloodlust and heightened power, the reason for his power overload and mindset.

Sitting and waiting in Naruto's body, it allowed Naruto to gain knowledge of all of the powerful things in this world that would have put much of the shinobi world to shame. It allowed Naruto to get the experience of just what could be done with these weapons. The skills of the humans in this world, while physically lacking for the most part was made up in the technology they employed. Even the almighty Kyuubi no Yoko could be brought down… perhaps yoked to the will of these humans the way that it had been in its original world. It simply did not know.

As long as this stupid human that it was imprisoned within could fight though, then it would remain safe until it could be freed. By the time that occurred it would have come up with a way to clear this world of its powerful weapons for itself. Without the weapons that this world possessed there was no one or nothing that could stop it like the shinobi of the Elemental Nations. There wouldn't be anything that would stop it.

Even this strange group that could override the U.S. government and get a hold of Naruto for experiments right under their nose was a threat. If they had that much influence already then there was a chance that they already had the power to capture it. It had to be destroyed as well. All the Kyuubi had to do was keep Naruto alive until the perfect opportunity presented itself.

"**Yes Naruto…"** The 'voice' in Naruto's head said as he could feel the slaughter going on outside in the real world, **"I am the only weapon you need. And in this world with its terrible nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction you **_**do**_** need me."** Behind a set of prison bars a vulpine grin made itself seen, **"Deep down you know that you do."**

XxX

(Forest at the U.S./Canadian Border)

Atop a cliff, a figure wearing a sleek, cybernetic exoskeleton suit that completely covered their body, covering the parts of the body that were fully machine in place of real human parts. The front of the helmet opened to reveal a very human male face with white/blonde hair. He looked down at the scene of destruction that had befallen what had once been their place of captivity, "What kind of weapon could have done something like this?" He asked in a gruff voice.

With his enhanced sight, the cybernetic man saw a red outline of a fox with three tails stalking away from the lab they had both been trapped in, walking shakily through the forest until the red outline went away and the young man it had originated from dropped face-first on the ground. He supposed there was some twisted humor in what he was about to do, since he felt no reason to assist the man other than the fact that he had obviously been subjected to Dr. Clark's experiments as well. He was satisfied when he escaped and ended that woman's life.

The figure honed in on Naruto and couldn't see any signs of life coming anywhere near or around him and let out a gravelly chuckle, "It's some kind of cosmic joke… A 'Gray Fox' like me helping out this strange red fox."

That had clearly been the thing that had kept the main force's attention while he slipped out of the base unseen after killing Dr. Clark. A boy that was one-third of his age had killed all of those men and destroyed the base. Almost similar to how he had fought in 1970, except instead of killing with cold efficiency this boy killed with hot anger and rage.

He then thought about how young Naruto seemed to look and thought about his own life as a child soldier, "I'll give you the same chance to keep living that Big Boss gave me little fox. Maybe you can find your own reason to keep fighting the way I did." With that, he vanished from sight with the use of stealth camouflage and decided to head over to Naruto and take him to civilization before continuing on with his own tasks. He had to get him out of there before a cleanup crew arrived to run damage control on what was done.

* * *

><p><strong>Naruto truly learns just what one-on-one fights are all about in this world for probably the first time. He learns that his ideal choice of a special force unit has an interest in him. A shadowy organization targeting Naruto for his unique abilities as they try to duplicate the results? Naruto finds out that things are just as shady in this world as they are in his own, and that his station as a soldier doesn't make him as secure as he thought he was. But this is just the beginning.<strong>

**What has befallen Naruto after his Kyuubi assisted escape from… wherever he was? How will he recover from his episode? What happens next? You probably don't know but I damn sure do.**

**For those of you that are reading this that don't know anything about the Metal Gear universe… you would find it prudent to go to the Metal Gear Wiki and at least get a crash course on stuff if you're into reading this further. It would work for you.**

**Anyway, I'm done for now. Kenchi out people. I'm going to go update something different right quick. **


	4. Domestic Pursuits

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. If I did then there would have been more black characters in the Metal Gear series, probably one as a recurring character… yeah… and I would have named him Antoine. Antoine Coltrane Malik Rutherford. Now that's a badass name.

**Chapter 4: Domestic Pursuits**

* * *

><p>Naruto didn't know what was happening. He woke up at random points only to find himself moving through the woods. He could see trees moving past him, but he could never identify who was transporting him, he couldn't even stay conscious for long enough to fight back. Using so much of the Kyuubi's chakra utterly drained him.<p>

He had never felt that much power before. He didn't even know that he could take that much. And then he saw black for the longest period of time since he had awoken in that lab.

(Naruto's Mindscape)

Naruto regained consciousness with half of his face in shallow water. Groaning to himself as he at first thought he was back in The Sorrow's realm, he picked himself up and looked around at his sewer like setting, putting a sneer on his face as he hadn't been here in quite some time. He knew exactly where he was.

Naruto stood up, ignoring the water dripping off of him and walked to a massive pair of bars, behind which a pair of very intimidating and large blood-red eyes were looking dead at him, **"It's about time you acknowledged me boy."**

Naruto narrowed his eyes at the Kyuubi, "What happened back in that lab? I've never taken that much chakra before." He looked at his own hands as if they weren't his own, "It felt… it felt-."

"**-Incredible?"** The Kyuubi tried to finish for him, hoping that feeling such intense power coursing through him would make Naruto easier to bend to his will. He had to have loved it. He effortlessly crushed the enemies that had done him so wrong.

"Horrible." Naruto said to the contrary of what the Kyuubi expected him to say. He was shaking his head in near disgust, his face reflecting his appalled tone at his own actions, "I tore those men apart. I fought like an animal… I was a monster." He looked up and glared at the Kyuubi, "I was like you!"

The Kyuubi growled angrily at the way Naruto had stated that, as if it were an insult, **"Watch your tongue boy. Is it really so wrong to want to be like me in this environment? You are meant to kill as many enemies as you can. Is that not what the soldiers of this world are meant to do?"**

"No! It isn't!" Naruto disputed heatedly. He never believed that he was only meant to kill others. That the amount of people he killed in the field reflected his overall value as a soldier, "It's about completing the mission! It's not just about killing others!"

The deep, rumbling laughter from the Kyuubi threw Naruto off at first, it had been angry just a moment ago, **"Do you even have any idea how many other humans you've killed since you began your little career?"** Naruto shook his head tentatively, **"It really makes me quite proud to have you as my container to be honest. I thought you were spineless, but in this world you've killed far more people than I had expected you to in your other one. These people, these conditions, these weapons bring out the absolute worst in you."** The Kyuubi saw Naruto's face turn irate and took delight in stopping Naruto's rant cold with its next statement, **"By my estimation you have killed between 85 and 100 humans. The least of them you killed in that desert place Afghanistan. You killed the most in the Philippines."**

Naruto didn't know it had even been that many. Then when he really thought about it, he had really only been counting the people he had shot directly himself. Naruto had indirectly caused many deaths even when he hadn't been the one pulling the trigger. His clones weren't firing blanks from their weapons, and even though they couldn't make their own plans or even have free will they could still aim and shoot. How many had they killed? Naruto had marked targets for airstrikes in the jungle, specific stronghold locations that he needed to find and scout himself. There was no denying that he had killed at least that many. Hell the Kyuubi might have been off on that number. He might have killed even more. He felt like he had killed so many people when he broke free of his bonds in that lab.

"**Do you see now?"** The Kyuubi said in a taunting voice, **"You say these things, that you don't like to kill, but you love your job! You like the fighting, the panic of battle, the adrenaline of putting your life on the line! You crave it!"**

"I don't need to enjoy killing to enjoy my job!" Naruto roared right back, not feeling like falling to the silver-tongued demon's words, "I like all of those things, but the killing is bittersweet! It's either me or them… I'm not like _you_. I don't kill just because there's someone in my way."

Silence reigned through the sewer-like representation of Naruto's mind as the two, human and demon, stared one another down. What was Naruto possibly afraid of, dying? He'd already been killed once. No, that wasn't it. Just his own death wouldn't be enough to convince Naruto of anything.

Kyuubi broke the silence between them after quite a bit, **"You need me. Sure, you may be able to handle a fool with a gun, but what happens when it's not just that?"** He saw Naruto stare long and hard, **"Or do you honestly believe that all by your lonesome you can defeat a tank? Or an attack helicopter? Or do you believe that you can survive an airstrike going for scorched earth? Don't be a fool. There are things in this world that would give even me pause."**

"Then you're the one that needs me." Naruto insisted in return. The slighted look on the Kyuubi's face told him that he had hit the right button to take this conversation into the deep waters, "You're right, I probably can't survive any of those things on my own. But that means neither can you since you're stuck inside of me… and I like the little setup you and I had when I first came here." He walked up to the cage and smirked, "You know the one right? The arrangement of you fucking owing me rent… so I'll just take what I need when I need it from you, and you just give it happily. I probably won't be doing that ever again after the last time by the way."

"**What did you just say?"** In a bitingly low voice the Kyuubi spoke, as if he was daring Naruto to say it again, threatening him to answer correctly the next time around.

Naruto shook his head almost in a pitying manner, "You don't get it. You don't get to bargain. Do you really think I'm okay with what your chakra made me do back there? I won't just use it like that for no reason."

"**What exactly is your problem?"** The Kyuubi said, trying to still turn Naruto to his side. There was no way that this puny human would turn down such power. It just wasn't human nature to do so, **"Were you not paying attention to just what you're capable of with my chakra running through you?"**

"I _was_ paying attention." Naruto insisted with an angry tone in his voice, "And it makes me sick thinking of what I did back there. I didn't just kill them because I had to, I could have just escaped. But no, I wound up killing all of them."

Now Naruto was beginning to truly grate on the Kyuubi's nerves. What was this fool babbling about? Killing because he had to? It was absurd, **"So what would you have done? Simply let those that held you captive live because you didn't **_**have**_** to kill them, boo-hoo?"** It finished in its best crybaby voice.

"Yes!" Naruto shouted. God, he wished he was strong enough to walk into that cage and punch that damned fox right in the nose, "Just because someone is your enemy doesn't mean they have to die! If I killed just because it appealed to me then that wouldn't make me any different that a murderer!"

"**Who do you think you are? Some sort of hero?"** Naruto was just as stupid as the Kyuubi remembered him being. Did the fool really think that he could survive the life he was living if he found killing to be distasteful? Did he even think that he would have survived as a ninja with that kind of mindset?

"Is it so wrong to want to be?" Naruto asked quietly. His tone was now far more reserved and calm than it had been for the last few minutes, "Is it so wrong to find a problem with fighting for no good reason? In Konoha I would have been fighting to protect my friends… to become Hokage. I've been a soldier for two years now and I still haven't found the reason that I fight for in this world. I don't have a purpose but this is all I'm good at." He looked up at the massive Kyuubi, "If I can't find the real reason that I'm fighting for then I guess I really am like you after all… just some killer."

The Kyuubi remained silent for a moment until Naruto turned and seemed to start walking away, seemingly in a daze, **"Where are you going? Take my power! Crush your enemies! Do you really believe that things are over? That the people that took you in the first place will just let you get away? They will come for you again! They will kill that girl and the old man that took you in! If they found you what makes you think they won't find them too? This goes far deeper than you could ever comprehend human, in this world things are not as they seem! Do not ignore me!"**

But Naruto was long gone, leaving the Kyuubi to roar in anger at letting the opportunity to sway Naruto to its will get away. But this was not over. The Kyuubi would get him eventually, it would have to. There was no way it would leave that hairless ape to roam in this world where he could be killed by someone he would never see as long as he was stuck inside of him.

XxX

(Portland, Oregon – October 10th 2003 – Naruto: Age 17)

Alone in the room with Naruto was a girl with curly blonde hair in a ponytail and bright green eyes, though right now they looked rather dull. She wore a dark purple skirt and a black leather jacket she kept zipped up with the exception of a necklace with a valuable looking green gem on it. Right now she had her hand rested firmly on Naruto's as she let out a sigh.

"Happy birthday big bro…" Catherine said softly, sitting at Naruto's bedside in his hospital room. She and Miller had been told that Naruto had been wounded in Iraq and had been flown back to the United States and was currently in a hospital in Oregon. She had gotten her mother to allow her to take some time off from school for a bit to come and see him once she learned he was in a coma.

The thing about it was that he was fully healed, he was breathing on his own, there were no visible problems with him, and she had just been contacted about it the other day. He had told her about some of his injuries in letters and phone calls. From what she had read and heard if he had been hurt badly enough to be sent home then he should have been in dire straits at the moment. He was a-ok.

They had never told her when he had been wounded, what had been done to him, nothing. It was as if his records on the matter had been expunged, but that couldn't have been right. The armed forces would have kept some kind of record on the things that happened to him wouldn't they?

Still she was glad he was alive if nothing else. Being a freshman in high school barely took her mind off of the fact that she missed him.

"It's been really boring without you around you know." Catherine said, speaking to an unresponsive Naruto as if he could actually hear her. If he could she wanted him to know that she was there, "Mom tells me all the time in L.A. to be careful when I go around. *laughs* But then I just tell her if anything happens to me that you would be on the first return trip back to the U.S. and you'd crack heads until the problem was solved… you bonehead."

He looked peaceful… he also needed a haircut really badly. It was trailing down past his shoulders at this point in its usual unstylable spiky setup. She then looked towards the door only to look away just as quickly. It felt as if something had been watching her or them but maybe she just needed some rest. She had been worried for two days straight already.

"So how is he?" She heard her father say suddenly, surprising her. Catherine watched as Miller walked in and took a seat on the other side of his bed, opposite her, "I haven't seen the kid ever stay down for longer than one day except for the time he damn near fell off a mountainside when I was teaching him how to climb."

"I remember that." Catherine said, remembering the first winter they had Naruto with them, "I could have killed you for that dad. I remember saying that you shouldn't let him do things like that, that he was just a kid, barely older than me. I used to say that a lot." Her eyes then panned to the sleeping soldier, "…I still feel that way too."

Miller took his sunglasses off for a moment and rubbed his eyes, "The kid will be back up in no time. He'll wake up soon, hungry enough to eat everything this hospital will give him and he'll still probably beg you or me for some ramen after he finished."

Catherine let out a small laugh, "I'd give it to him too. It's supposed to be his birthday today. You know he's 17 right? He should be in high school with me, not fighting some war."

"That's your opinion Kitty…"

Hearing that weak voice stopped both Catherine and Miller cold as they both turned towards Naruto who didn't look like he had stirred at all except for when he opened his mouth to speak again, "…I'd know that voice anywhere… and only one person would keep griping about me not being in high school."

"Naruto!" Catherine exclaimed happily as Miller got up to find him something to drink, "You're awake! Are you alright?"

Naruto's eyes slowly opened and he had to squint for a while due to the fluorescent lighting in the room, "I'll be fine. I'm kind of stiff but I'll get over it soon enough." He then felt someone put a small cup to his mouth and he began to take a few sips of water, "Thanks."

Catherine handed the cup back to Miller and took her seat by Naruto's side, pulling closer to his bed, "What on earth happened to you Naruto? They said you were hurt in Iraq but no one told me how you got injured. I don't even think dad knew."

That made Naruto's eyes snap open before once again the light blinded him. They said he was found in Iraq injured? Now Naruto might not have been fully aware when he had his little Kyuubi-episode but he knew what Iraq looked like, and before he blacked out he sure as hell wasn't in Iraq. He passed out in the woods, and they were deep woods so there was no mistaking that. Also he didn't feel like he had just been in a coma like the last time he had woken up, it just felt like he had been sleeping for a while.

Then he thought about what the Kyuubi had told him while they had been talking. Things weren't what they seemed. The people that had taken him were influential enough to take him right out from under the army and cover it up so that not only did no one ask questions, his own closest people didn't even know he was gone until he reappeared. From the inquisitive look on Catherine's face she didn't know anything other than what she was told. Miller looked suspicious but he was much the same way, he must have suspected something.

What was he supposed to say? Was he just supposed to come out and say, 'Yeah I _did_ get hurt in Iraq… months ago. For the past few months some bitch studied my genes and did experiments on me. It's okay though, I broke out and killed everyone there before somehow winding up here.' No. Because the Kyuubi's other words rang true. If these people could get to him in front of his alert unit in the middle of a warzone then they could easily get to a 14-15 year old girl in high school or her well-known retired soldier father that lived by himself at the moment in the middle of Alaska. They didn't need to know. This wasn't about them.

Naruto gave a weak grin and tried to pull up something on the spot, "Well I didn't get hurt by insurgents or anything. They hired some roaming mercenaries that were way better than what we were used to… I got hurt taking out a bunch of them before they could pin down my squad and a few others. They weren't even native to the region."

Miller seemed to buy this excuse with his own explanation, "Ah I see. It reminds me of back when I was a mercenary myself. Telling the public about a group of mercenaries hired to fight against the U.S. would cause some serious problems especially if they weren't from Iraq where the fight took place. An army without borders is a rather dangerous thing."

A smile and a nod came from Naruto, happy that they bought his bullshit excuse, well formulated it was as Miller filled in his own blanks. He then found a pair of arms wrapped tightly around him as Catherine hugged him tightly, "Don't ever get hurt again! I was scared to death when I found out what happened to you!"

Once again as tears started hitting him through his hospital robe Naruto felt terrible. It was true that none of this would have ever happened to him if he hadn't gotten himself hurt in the first place. It was once again his fault that he was making his favorite girl cry. All he could really do was pat her on the back and tell her it was okay, "Don't go worrying about me. Some Russian chick with a kick-ass knife can't kill me. I'm better than that. Just stop crying okay? I'm not dead." He looked over at Miller for some help only for the man to back away with his hands in a defensive gesture, not knowing how to handle this.

Catherine pulled away with teary eyes, seeing how uncomfortable Naruto was with her crying as she took her seat and tried to stop, "I'm sorry, it's just I already told you that I wouldn't know what to do if you died. I have nightmares of you getting hurt all the time."

A frown came to Naruto's face. Was it really that big of a deal to her that he was out fighting? He then noticed the necklace she wore prominently around her neck, even over her leather jacket, "You took care of the necklace. I'm glad you still have it."

Catherine blinked before looking down at the necklace around her throat, "Of course I took care of it. I always wear this." She said, prideful of her gift that Naruto gave her years ago, "D-Do you want it back?"

Naruto gave her a grin and slowly sat up in his bed, "Nah, you wear it better than me." He said, getting a soft, embarrassed smile out of her, "I don't feel like taking it back just yet. I want you to keep it until you graduate okay? Then I'll take it back… maybe." He was happy that his change of topic away from his injuries in combat succeeded in stopping Catherine from crying. He was a sucker for tears, especially when he was the one that caused them.

"Are you coming home?" Miller asked Naruto suddenly with a hard look in his eyes. Catherine's face lit up at the prospect of Naruto going home to Alaska again. Maybe he could even move down to Los Angeles with her while she finished school? There was a real reason that Miller had asked Naruto this however. Whatever had happened to Naruto had been serious enough to wind up with him being home. He wanted to know just how strong Naruto's resolve was. Naruto had seen just what could happen in battle, both on the side of victory and the side of when things don't go just your way.

Catherine realized belatedly once she caught the looks of utmost seriousness between Naruto and Miller that it wasn't just as simple as it seemed to her. Naruto had fought. He had fought well. He had fought for two years and had gotten wounded badly. He could come home now couldn't he? But what if that wasn't it, what if Naruto wanted to keep doing what he did?

And her thoughts were proven correct when Naruto answered, "No. Not for good. As a matter of fact I won't be there for even a month or two I think." He then stood up out of the bed much to Catherine's surprise, "I don't want to quit… there are some questions that I need to answer. Questions about myself, about other things too… I can only answer these questions as long as I keep fighting." He turned to a crestfallen looking Catherine, "I'm sorry Kitty."

This wasn't over yet. He needed to be better, because there was no way he was ever going to get away from those people that came for him. And he couldn't get out, because as far as he could see the further away from the battlefield he got the clearer the bullseye on his back became. He needed to be in the system so to speak. It was the only way he would ever get to the bottom of just what happened to him.

"Besides…" Naruto said putting his hands on the younger girl's shoulders, "We've had this conversation before. What else would I possibly do?" He smiled at her only to get a half-hearted one in response as he let go of her. And backed up a few steps, "By the way… I'm all good to go, but I don't think there are any clothes for me." He asked, scratching his cheek as he realized that he was in a hospital robe at the moment.

Catherine pushed him back towards his bed and got him to sit down, before patting his cheek, "I'll go and get you something to wear okay?" She asked as she got her face close to his, smiling at him, "I'll be back soon okay?"

Naruto was almost unable to answer at first, as he had to hold back from physically lashing out at Catherine. He swore he saw Dr. Clark much in the same way he had seen her when she had gotten that close to his face in the lab. He quickly got a grip, telling himself he was fine, that it was just Catherine, but it scared him that he felt that way, "Y-Yeah, that would be great Kitty. Thank you."

Catherine took that as her cue to go find Naruto some clothes which left Naruto and Miller alone in the room. Once she went through the doorway she popped her head back in and gave a light glare to Naruto, "What did I tell you about calling me Kitty?"

Naruto ran a hand through his hair as his mind began to backtrack through his memories, not that he really wanted to remember what had happened to him. Still, he found it in him to give his usual response to his sweet little sister, "I'll stop calling you Kitty when I drop dead… and I'm not dead yet." The blonde girl let out a huff, but couldn't keep the smile off of her face as she went on her way.

This left Naruto to be alone with his thoughts once again as he had nothing he needed to say. He could feel particular jabs of phantom pain, not in any particular place, but it was beginning to mess with him. He couldn't even make a tight fist because of his nerves. Master Miller noticed Naruto's heightened breathing that he somehow was able to hide from Catherine until she left the room, "Something the matter kid?"

Naruto's eyes snapped to Miller as for a moment he could swear that his hospital room resembled the lab he had been in. Whatever had been done to him he was getting flashes of whatever had occurred now that his mind had the time to wander. Naruto eventually grabbed his own hand to stop his nerves, trying to play it off as him cracking his knuckles, "No, nothing's wrong. Just a little stiff Master Miller, that's all."

Miller walked over and sat next to Naruto on the bed, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. He had definitely been keeping active, as he could feel Naruto's muscles were more solid than he remembered him leaving with, "So how's the life treating you?"

"Other than the getting shot, stabbed, blown to hell, and put in a coma thing…" Naruto said, trying to go for some darker natured humor, "I'm doing great." 'Except for the whole getting captured and randomly getting bits and pieces of getting tormented in a lab… but you don't need to know that.' Naruto then added something else, "I don't know though… I'll probably be shipped right back to Iraq again once the brass realizes that I'm good to go."

"Not particularly." Miller said with a grin forming on his features, "A few months ago I got contacted by a man, he had a codename of Liquid Snake and apparently he's the field commander of FOXHOUND that took over after my friend Colonel Campbell retired. Anyway, he said he was going to try and reach out to you, because Campbell had been vouching for you using both of our credentials to anyone that was looking for someone to bolster their special forces."

He remembered the last conversation he had in Iraq before all hell broke loose. Apparently FOXHOUND had been there asking about him, wanting to talk to him themselves. Then he fought Olga and the Gurlukovich Mercenaries and while he won… there were more important things to deal with other than a glorified job interview; namely him being captured.

"Anyway…" Miller got back on track quickly, "Right after I heard that you were here and started making plans to run down here to see you I got another call. This time from a man that referred to himself as Liquid's right hand and a member of the unit. Apparently they still want you to join. They heard about your work in the Philippines… apparently that's what got their attention in the first place."

They still wanted him to join. They were still interested in him. Now this was something that could work out for him. If there was a group that was out for his blood or his genes or whatever the hell he had been captured for then what better group of soldiers to surround himself with than a group that was known to be the best? If he could become a member of FOXHOUND then he'd love to see anyone try anything on him behind his back. Never again, he would never be put in that situation again.

That was his next step. It had been a goal of his in the first place to be a member of FOXHOUND anyway, because Miller had always told him that they were the best.

Naruto turned towards Miller with the same gleam in his eye he had when Miller had suggested training under him in the first place. Miller noted a smoldering intensity in the boy's eyes and couldn't help but fight back a shiver. There wasn't any mistaking it like the first time he had heard Naruto call himself one, he was without a doubt an experienced soldier now.

Naruto let a small grin come over his face, "So how do I get in contact with these guys?"

XxX

(Cordillera Central – Andean Region of Colombia – January 2004 – Naruto: Age 17)

He went home to Alaska, on the basis that he needed some time to recover from his 'wounds', and for the next three months worked hard to find any possible hole in his overall game that needed to be touched up. He didn't have time to lag behind and play catch-up if he was serious about what he planned on doing. He couldn't allow any weaknesses that would put him in a similar predicament as the one that allowed his injury and capture.

Whether he had paid attention to himself or not he also developed a few new quirks that Miller and even Catherine when she came up for Christmas were able to point out. Things that made an already weird personality even weirder.

He would vanish for hours, never telling anyone where he went, he became impossibly difficult to find even to those who knew him best. He could have been anywhere around the property, but catching sight of him or any sign that he existed at all became nearly impossible. It wasn't like he was going far, because food that Naruto would eat would be missing over periods of time, so he was coming back, they just weren't catching sight of him. Then just like that he would appear and laze around for a day or two before repeating the process over again.

When he could actually be found at home he became increasingly alert to even the slightest happenings, oftentimes where you would find Naruto himself he would already know that you were searching for him due to having clones in hiding in certain places in the house dispelling to inform him of such. He was nearly impossible to sneak up on when he was resting for this same reason, even in his deepest sleep.

He also took to hiding more weapons on his person, not only in his regular clothing, but in more unorthodox locations that were easy for him to access quickly. A nasty little surprise for troublesome enemies never hurt; he had learned this firsthand from Olga and her trick ballistic knife.

Other than that his eating habits became even faster than before, as if he always had somewhere to be in a hurry, even if all he was going to do next was go outside and shoot. He would often switch modes of operating in a heartbeat, going from vibrant and energetic to borderline lethargic as if he were flipping a switch. By now Miller had stopped training him, he had nothing more that he could really teach Naruto how to do. Thus the man assumed that this was all a part of his new training regiment, as puzzling as it was.

_(Flashback – Christmas Break)_

_In the falling snow Naruto lay on top of the roof of the house in his full winter clothing, he was barely moving an inch as he looked through the scope of the Dragunov that he had managed to procure for himself in the Philippines and smuggle back to Alaska for safekeeping. He merely gazed out from the top of the three story house at the overall scenery._

_While he was doing this, a large ladder was placed against the side of the house as Catherine climbed her way up to the roof wearing all of her winter clothes as well, "Hey Kitty." Naruto said without even turning around to look. He didn't even have a clone watching out for anyone, there was only one person that would actively seek him out after Master Miller understood that everything he did was his own way to train, "What's going on? Did you need something?"_

"_No." She said, tentatively walking towards him so that she didn't fall off of the roof. She couldn't stick to surfaces like Naruto could, so she had to take care. Sometimes she wished she had superpowers like Naruto had… she could do without the crazy that went with them though, "You've been out here since last night, you never came in."_

"_How would you know that?" Naruto asked, still looking through the scope of the rifle. When she didn't answer Naruto let out a sigh, "You stayed up all night again didn't you."_

_Catherine eventually made it close enough to Naruto that she found it safe to stop walking and sit down just looking over the snowy forests surrounding the property, "It's my break. I can stay up for as long as I want. It's not like I have school tomorrow. It's good enough for you isn't it?"_

"_I'm different." Naruto said, pulling the trigger of the rifle only to get an empty click from the gun, "By the way, I'm going to be gone tonight too. I don't know when I'll be back. Maybe later that night, maybe tomorrow, I don't know."_

_Catherine rolled her eyes and poked Naruto in the side of his hooded head, "And what are you going to be doing this time? Tell me, I want to know. You're never home during the nights anymore."_

_A smirk came onto Naruto's face, "What, do you miss the stories I used to tell you back when I first started staying here?" He asked in a teasing manner, "I'll tell you what, before I head out tonight I'll tell you the story about the Nine-Tailed Fox that attacked a warrior village again for old times sake. You loved that one." He felt her shove him and let out a laugh, "Okay how about the story about the boy and the bridge?"_

"_I'm too old for your baby stories." Catherine said, remembering how he would actually do that for her when she was 10 years old, "I was too old back then."_

"_You weren't too old to sleep with your big brother were you?" This time he felt a pretty solid punch in his back that made him start to laugh out loud._

"_I told you never to bring that up again!" She shouted with a red face. What the hell? She was 10 or 11, it was Alaska, and he was always warm. He was probably warm right now. It was probably why he could stay outside in these conditions for as long as he did._

_Naruto stifled his laughter and stopped aiming his empty Dragunov, opting to sit up and chat with his 'sister', "Okay I'm sorry Kitty. I'll tell you what I'm doing tonight. I'm going to have a sniper battle with one of my Kage Bunshin all over the forest. One 10-round magazine each, first to get a hit wins, running out of ammo means you lose… no side-arm, no time limit… old-school style." He saw her glaring at him… probably because she knew that all he had was live ammunition to practice with, "What? I'm going to order the Kage Bunshin to aim to wound instead of kill."_

_She didn't like that even when he was home away from all of the war all Naruto could think about doing was fighting. There were no enemies to fight but it didn't matter. No enemies? No problem, Naruto could make his own enemies to go out and fight. And she knew that he hated sitting at home doing nothing, that was why he had come up with all of these weird things to do to train. It was practical though._

"_So you aren't coming back inside tonight?" Catherine asked him, tilting her head to the side questioningly before she caught herself doing it. Damn it she was picking up some of Naruto's traits other than his like of shooting, "Do you want me to leave something out for you to eat when you come back in? I don't want you tearing through the ramen again before you go back into hiding mode."_

_Naruto just smiled at her and chuckled, cold air forming clouds from his mouth as he did, "I don't know who's taking care of who around here. Me taking care of you or you taking care of me."_

"_Someone has to do it." The female blonde teen said, leaning forward to put a kiss on Naruto's cheek before getting up to leave the roof, "Even if it's really a drag. You're a hard person to love Naruto… but you're still my big brother you jerk. Don't forget that."_

"_I know." Naruto said, returning to his work of getting used to his sniper rifle. Once he knew that Catherine was gone from the roof he sighed and spoke softly, "And I won't."_

(End Flashback)

'Why the fuck am I here now?' Naruto thought to himself in a rather perturbed manner. He hadn't found a way to call or contact any part of FOXHOUND directly, something he found weird, but he was instead given directions on exact coordinates to meet them at during an exact period of time, 'Why couldn't it have been someplace like Japan? I hear they make their ramen fresh, just like home.' Still, he wasn't about to let his opportunity slip. He would jump through the hoops if that was what it took.

Which was why he was currently in South America, skulking through the lower portions of the mountains to find the coordinates indicated in his instructions left by whoever had come to see Master Miller. At least it wasn't the desert, that was all he could say.

He had to get himself all the way down to Colombia, which wasn't necessarily the problem. The problem was getting down there and keeping enough weapons on himself to feel comfortable. He had no explosives, at least any traditional explosives. He had nothing automatic on him, the most firepower he had were a pair of SOCOM pistols. But it wasn't like he was heading out there to fight.

He hoped he wasn't at least, because he might have been woefully underequipped if that were the case.

Naruto had made it to a village by the foothills before he started traversing the paths heading up the more remote parts of the mountain, a bearded guide that was apparently former Colombian armed forces, found him there and proved to Naruto that he was an actual representative of FOXHOUND, meant to guide him to the meeting site. The sticking point that actually made Naruto keep going instead of turning around to head home was the fact that the man was not armed or had any form of remote contact with anyone, otherwise Naruto would have smelled a trap and would have left.

So as they headed towards the true point of his coordinates, Naruto wore his headband with a black cloth, an olive colored jacket that was partially zipped up, a white shirt underneath, a pair of olive pants that had his usual accessories attached to him, and a pair of brown boots, "Why couldn't there just have been an actual headquarters of operations for me to go to?" He asked rhetorically as a means of griping out loud.

The Colombian man guiding him let out a laugh, "I suppose it would be rather cumbersome to get all the way down to Colombia in the middle of a village all by yourself. You're lucky this isn't a known place for freedom fighters to roost. By the way, your Spanish is very good for an American."

Naruto let out a small laugh. If freedom fighters had a problem with him and would have tried to detain him that really would have been a major problem, "Thanks I guess. How did you find me anyway?"

This time is was the Colombian guide's turn to laugh, "You were the only blonde, blue-eyed American that's been in this village since… ever." He stopped and laughed boisterously, "It wouldn't take a brain surgeon to find that you were the one I was supposed to find and lead up here. You're kind of young aren't you?"

"Getting shot at doesn't really have any age limits." Naruto quipped dryly. He was so sick of hearing about how young he was by the people around him. That got really old really fast, "Hey you aren't in FOXHOUND yourself are you?" He asked. Why else would this guy know where they were supposed to be going.

The man turned towards Naruto, "Sorry, I'm just the one that was supposed to bring you out here. Not everyone can know where they're supposed to be. They were sent down here to help with some problems the Colombian government's been having."

It seemed to be so, since they hadn't been on the beaten path for at least an hour, maybe more. He could see why since the terrain was not favorable for any kind of ground vehicle whatsoever. Rocky, yet with craggy land formations, plenty of places for a vehicle to get stuck.

"Alright, this is far enough." Naruto's guide said, stopping suddenly in front of Naruto with his back turned. Naruto's hand quickly went to his thigh as he produced a kunai, seemingly having been ready for any treachery. The man didn't even turn around, simply knowing that Naruto had dropped into a fighting stance, "Hey, you wouldn't kill an unarmed man would you?"

"Of course I can." Naruto said, by now having moved behind the man with his specialized blade at his neck, "It's not like you have any weapons to stop me. Now tell me who you are? Why did you bring me out here? Be quick with the answer now." Naruto threatened, pressing the kunai close enough to draw blood.

"I already told you kid…" The man said, seemingly not intimidated by the possibility of his death, "I'm the one that was meant to bring you out here… but I'll answer your earlier question too. It just so happens that I _am_ FOXHOUND." With that, a gunshot sounded out and Naruto immediately let the man go, dropping to the ground like a flash of lightning as the man he had in his grasp not even moments before took off running, "Good luck kid! You're going to need it!"

Naruto grit his teeth and was about to go after the man, but he remembered the sniper watching him somewhere. Luckily, Naruto had brought enough tools with him to make some sport out of this. First thing was first, he needed to get out of the open somehow. Naruto quickly reached into one of the special carrying cases on his person and dropped a smoke grenade that enshrouded him from view.

XxX

From a vantage point, hidden well from the view of any possible targets and far away from the area of interest she was attacking, a woman lay on the ground looking through the scope of her Heckler & Koch PSG-1 sniper rifle. She had long blonde hair with bangs that almost covered her right eye, luckily this was not the eye she had looking through the scope of her gun. She wore a choker around her neck, lipstick, a pair of tight dark leggings that went down into boots, a pair of fingerless gloves, and a dark combat jacket that she left unzipped enough to reveal her rather impressive cleavage.

A smirk came to her face as she watched Naruto's actions through her scope. The first shot she fired when Naruto had grabbed the decoy slated to lead him out there in the first place was meant to be a warning. It wouldn't have been fair or sporting to just shoot the boy when he had no chance whatsoever to defend himself. That was his only freebie though, the next opening he gave her would be his last mistake.

Which was why she was pleased when she saw him make a smokescreen to cover his immediate position in the time that it took for another round to chamber, "He's not as stupid as he looks in his records." She said in a Middle Eastern accent, letting out a small laugh as she saw five Narutos rush from the smoke in different directions faster than any normal human could follow on foot, "I think I really want to see just what he can do now." She then got up to find a new position. She wouldn't be hitting any of the Narutos if she stayed there.

XxX

(With Naruto)

'A sniper… A goddamn sniper!' Naruto thought furiously to himself as he ran as fast as he could, making sure to keep an erratic running pattern as he did. Eventually he saw a nearby forest and as much as he hated to pigeonhole himself it was a fact that any sniper worth their salt would be able to take him out if he stayed in the open. At least around a forest setting he would have a chance to survive, maybe even hide and somehow get away.

Well this was worst case scenario if he had to pick a crappy situation to get himself into, and this time he definitely knew that nobody was coming for him because he was all alone. He had been led to a chosen ground for combat by someone who obviously knew the terrain while he only had base knowledge of the region. Great.

'Whatever… I do my best work with a handicap.' Naruto thought to himself when all of a sudden he felt a splitting pain in his temple that brought him to his knees. Well one of his clones got picked off, right in the head too. Luckily the other ones got the same message and were smart enough to dispel so that they didn't risk inflicting more pain on Naruto when they were killed. He didn't need mindless bodies that wouldn't be any good on their own. Still, at the moment his skull was ringing with pain.

The backlash his clones gave him when they took damage really was painful. There was no difference between getting shot himself and having a clone get shot. He still felt the exact same, only he didn't suffer the actual injury, and he would feel it for hours. No painkillers though, never any painkillers. Not only did he not want to wind up an addict because of them, he wanted to stay as far away from something that could mimic the effects of a sedative as possible.

He didn't register it much unless the wounds started to build up over a short period of time, either that or unless his clones took a direct shot that would kill him if he had been hit with it. A headshot from a 7.62 round would register as the latter in this case.

Naruto sucked it up however and kept moving through the forest. This was better though, better than walking through the mountains though. He needed to watch his own back better because this was getting ridiculous. Before he could curse his bad luck and actually getting himself in gear to come all the way to Colombia for an ambush, Naruto heard rather heavy footsteps walking through the forest as well.

Naruto immediately scrambled up a tree and hid within the leaves as the footsteps got closer behind the trunk of the tree he was hiding in.

"Yes, I'm inside of the small patch of forest that Wolf said the boy most likely fled to." Naruto heard a burly male voice say as the footsteps continued, "I've tracked him to this general area but his trail just stopped nearby. He knows how to disappear… that's good." The man must have been communicating with his comrades… well this was going to be his last transmission. Naruto gripped a kunai tightly in his hand in preparation until he heard the man's next words, "Well if he's so thorough in his hiding then I guess I'll take away his hiding places."

And with that, Naruto heard a hydraulic whirring sound that he hadn't heard in quite a while. What would something like that do out there? And he found out when machine gun bullets started ripping into the trees directly around the tree Naruto was in, tearing them asunder and knocking them down, right before Naruto's tree came next. Naruto quickly jumped out of the tree just as it started falling and rolled through the drop before turning to stare down the man that had been shooting at him.

He towered over Naruto at 6'9 and was nothing but pure muscle, 'Man he's got to outweigh me by at least double of what I am.' A man of from Naruto's experience in Alaska told him was of Inuit descent, he wore forest camouflage pants, brown boots, and no shirt but had a torso covered in odd tattoo patterns. He was also bald, but had a large marking of a raven across his forehead. Also in his hands was a particular weapon that made Naruto just stare.

"What the fuck is that?" Naruto exclaimed in pure shock and awe. In this man's hands he had a M61 Vulcan gatling gun… a kind of weapon that would be better suited towards being placed on fighter aircraft because there was no way that it didn't weigh any less than 250 pounds. That wasn't even taking into account the ammo drum he had with him or the power supply on his back, "How are you lifting that and who are you?"

The man blinked before chuckling at Naruto's reaction to his presence, "Of course, I was just stunned for a moment. You have a great power hidden within your body, it distracted me as to trying to find out what it was." He adjusted the massive weapon in his hands, "I am Vulcan Raven, and you are Naruto Uzumaki, my target." The large man stated simply with a grin on his face.

"Of course I am." Naruto said with a deadpan look on his face in return, "And why wouldn't I be when I'm just so special?" He said sarcastically as he drew his SOCOM and held it in conjunction with his kunai. How could this day get any worse, "Yep… special, special, special."

* * *

><p><span>Omake – Happy Birthday Aniki<span>

After getting Naruto his clothes, Catherine returned to the room, though from the look on her face she was rather displeased. As she entered to see Naruto sitting in his bed talking about some of the stuff he had seen while he had been gone in the Philippines and Iraq and her father in a chair nearby listening and adding his own two cents she placed a large bag on the bed, "Well this isn't much, or what I would have gotten you if I had more choice, but the pickings for clothes were slim so here you go."

Between the terrible choices she had to choose from when it came to clothes, this was the lesser evil. And he'd be going home soon enough to change into some clothes that actually made him look sane.

Naruto blinked and looked into the bag where his eyes went wide. Catherine sighed and turned away, waiting for his angry reaction to what she had bought for him only to hear quick rustling and movement. She turned to find Naruto already up and changed, "Wow… fast."

Naruto was dressed in an orange jumpsuit with black trim and looked as happy as could be, "Oh man this is great… I'm feeling nostalgic here. Where did you get these? I want some more just like these."

'Oh fuck…' Miller watched Naruto and facepalmed. Apparently when his daughter went to buy Naruto some clothes she forgot how much hell he raised when he first started living with them and Miller threw out his orange jumpsuit, calling it an eyesore. Although maybe she didn't remember because Naruto couldn't speak English back then… he certainly cursed vehemently in Japanese though, "Great… here we go again." He would have to throw that to the huskies to chew to bits the second he got home… just like the first time.

Naruto rushed over to Catherine and picked her up in a tight hug, surprising her that he was so strong when he had just woken up probably not even an hour or two prior, "Thank you Kitty. I've been wanting to get something like this for years. I've got my new favorite thing to wear now, this gift is awesome."

'You like that ugly thing? You look like a walking traffic marker!' She thought to herself but didn't say out loud. If he was happy with it then it didn't really matter Catherine guessed, "Um, sure thing. Happy birthday Naruto." She said half-heartedly with a tentative laugh.

* * *

><p><strong>Yeah! It's time to commence preparations for rumbling! Who are these strange attackers of Naruto (As if you didn't know already…)? What do they want from him? How's he going to get himself out of this one? Why am I asking you stuff that I already know the answer to? That's easy! Because most of <strong>_**you**_** don't know and I like feeling smart!**

**Anyway, I'll catch you on the flip. Kenchi out. I gots to give my little brother his 19 birthday punches… and that will probably end in a fight… that I will win because I'm me. Either way it's going to be fun, so later.**


	5. Play For Keeps

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Hey, since when don't I? Damn it, someone took the rights from me. Who could it have been? *gasp* Of course, it's so obvious!

LIQUID!

**Chapter 5: Play For Keeps**

* * *

><p>The whirring of the weapon in Vulcan Raven's hands gave way to him unloading a barrage of 20 mm bullets at the poor hapless boy, until his bullet-riddled body burst into smoke and a pulverized log dropped to the ground in his place, leaving Raven alone with Naruto no longer in sight, "I already know that you're good at hiding." He said before unleashing more gunfire to batter down some trees, "I will just have to get rid of all of your places to hide." He then started firing randomly all over the forest, taking down trees with his powerful M61 Vulcan.<p>

'This sucks!' Naruto exclaimed in his head as he remained in hiding, sometimes stray bullets from Raven's gun would whiz past his tree hidden deeper than Raven could get to in order to take it down like the others, 'Pistol does _not_ beat gatling gun! Pistol does not beat gatling gun at all!' He needed more firepower if he was actually going to try and take this bastard down.

More rapid gunfire rang out violently, some even striking Naruto's hiding place repeatedly this time, "You cannot hide from me little one!" He heard Raven shout before he looked up at the behest of the caws of a few actual ravens, "My friends have found you it seems." He said before the whirring kicked up again. Naruto didn't need to be told to get himself away just as the tree he had been hiding behind found itself cut to pieces by gatling gun fire.

Naruto was not going to risk going head-to-head with this man. That gun would tear him to hamburger meat if it managed to catch him. So inside of the forest he had a guy with a gatling gun hunting him down and outside he had a sniper waiting for him to poke his bright yellow head out so that they could put a hole in it for him. It was pick your poison at its worst. Naruto took the pack off of his back and started perusing through it.

'Fine, if these guys want to hunt me down I'll show 'em just who's really the prey in this little situation.' He thought as he pulled out his supplies. He didn't have any extra _guns_ other than his SOCOM pistols on him. He didn't necessarily need a gun to kill someone… but it sure didn't hurt to have one, 'Time to go old-school… man I hope I have time for this.' He thought to himself as Vulcan Raven's massive gun kept rattling down trees in search of him in the distance.

XxX

Raven walked through what was mostly ruined forest. There was no blood anywhere, he hadn't hit Naruto which was actually better for the boy than he would have ever understood because the M61 Vulcan would have torn him apart before he could even respond had he been shot. Still he had downed well over a dozen trees taking out the areas of Naruto to possibly hide and hadn't found hide nor hair of him in quite some time.

Two gunshots then sounded out from a hidden area, hitting Raven in one of his massive arms as he blocked his head. He growled through the hot lead piercing his flesh and turned in the direction the shots came from to mow down all of the vegetable life in that direction. After a few moments of shooting he walked over in that direction to investigate, stepping over the fallen trees left in his wake before the sound of metal wire being cut echoed out.

Raven's eyes widened as he expected an explosion of some sort, but this was not what occurred. A snapping noise followed by five kunai flying from the leaves of another tree wound up stabbing Raven in his broad back. The man let out a yell of pain and turned to unleash hell in that direction, but Naruto himself took that moment to drop down from the sky in Raven's blindspot, "Got you!"

With his advantage found, Naruto began unleashing a barrage of nasty punches of all varieties; hooks, uppercuts, etc. to Raven's exposed face as his arms held onto his gatling gun. Naruto proceeded to pound away on Raven's face for a good unanswered twenty strikes before one of his hands got caught. He looked up and saw Raven's grin once again through the cuts and bruises that Naruto's fists had given him, "Oh come on, really?" Naruto then formed a Rasengan in his free hand but found that wrist caught in Raven's grasp as well, "Shit." Raven was just as strong as he looked… which was significantly stronger than Naruto.

Raven, who stood at least a full foot taller than Naruto and double his girth, lifted the boy off of the ground by the arms and started trying to pull them apart, an attempt to take his shoulders out of the sockets. Naruto grit his teeth to hold back his pain before using his legs to deliver kicks to Raven's exposed face and neck again and again, 'This guy's such a juggernaut! Go down already!'

Raven tired of getting kicked in the face by Naruto's tiny by comparison legs and delivered a direct headbutt to Naruto's cranium that stopped the barrage. He held Naruto up to his face as the boy's body seemed to momentarily go limp, "Trying to defeat me in hand-to-hand combat was rather foolish little one."

A smirk came over the captured Naruto's lowered face, "That wasn't meant to beat you. It was a setup." Naruto then lifted his head, biting something in his cheek before he spit a caustic substance into Raven's eyes that obscured his vision. The large man bellowed in pain and threw Naruto violently away from him, not seeing as the boy's body bounced off of a tree trunk.

It was of no matter at the moment though, since from behind the massive gatling gun toting assailant a clone rushed from hiding with a Rasengan formed that was then slammed into Raven's back. The powerful attack managed to destroy the power supply to Raven's gun and disrupt his ammo drum as it sent the heavy man and his cumbersome weapon flying, not very far by Rasengan standards, but flying nonetheless.

Raven's face smashed into a tree much like the original Naruto's entire body had, only on his back was his ruined power supply and ammo drum. Naruto couldn't help but grin as he stood back up. Why deal with risking having a clone run a diversion as it wouldn't be able to truly express a feint when he could do it himself and leave a clone waiting in the wings to attack? It certainly cut out the middleman of having to deal with the pain consequence.

Naruto got back up to his feet only to see Raven still standing, having pushed himself off of the tree that now had a rather nice Raven-sized dent in it. Raven himself pulled splinters out of his face and growled at Naruto, "Pretty good… but now you-." He tried to fire his gun only for nothing to happen. As he looked down at his damaged weapon he didn't notice Naruto slip away once again.

'Sorry.' Naruto thought to himself, taking this moment to make tracks and try to leave the area, 'But now you don't have a weapon so you're not really a threat anymore. I've got to think about getting out of here before anything else.' There wasn't any need to sneak around, he just needed to run. Such a big guy like Raven couldn't possibly move as fast as Naruto could, even without his gatling gun weighing him down.

Naruto found himself running through the woods down a hill, hopefully in the direction back towards the village. It wasn't even close to being safe, but it was definitely a start. He risked staying in the woods instead of going back down the path that had taken him to the ambush point because he still remembered the sniper that was somewhere. He had more of a chance of getting away like this than out there.

"_You can run all you like but you won't get away."_

The voice that had just run through Naruto's head surprised him, tripping him up and forcing him to fall out of his full-speed run, rolling violently down the hill as he miraculously missed smashing against any trees. He eventually made his way back to his feet, "Who's out there?" He demanded, looking around with his SOCOM drawn.

The voice cackled in Naruto's head, but Naruto had a more intimidating voice in his head more often so he wasn't actually frightened by this one, more like annoyed which he expressed when he started running again, not caring what was happening, _"You have a strong will. I can't seem to force your body to stop moving."_ That will was built up to start fighting down the Kyuubi's chakra in case it tried a hostile takeover again. Good to see that it had served another purpose somewhere.

'Thanks.' Naruto thought sarcastically. As if he cared what some brain trolling lunatic thought, 'You have no idea how much it means to me to hear you say that.' A sniper shot rang out and Naruto immediately baseball slid to a stop to avoid a bullet hitting him, instead planting itself in a nearby tree trunk, 'Oh come on! Of course they would have been following me all of this time! It's not like someone would be nice for once and let me leave!' Naruto stood back up and griped loudly at the hidden sniper, "Go away!" His reply was another shot, but by then Naruto had already began running, ducking and dodging through the forest again.

Running was all he could do if there was a sniper after him. It wasn't like he had a rifle of his own to fight back with. Besides, any sniper worth their salt would be difficult to find, and the fact that they could already see him meant that he wouldn't be able to sneak up on them so easily. And with some guy messing with his head from somewhere else he was in some serious trouble.

"_Where do you think you're running to?"_

'Anywhere away from the rest of you creeps.'

"_You do know that you're running the wrong way don't you?"_

'Well if the wrong way is anywhere where you're not then I think I'm running the right way.'

The voice in his head laughed boisterously at that response, _"I really hope you stay alive now. I think you'd be fun to mess with unlike most others that think they're hot stuff. You just might be the real deal kid. I'll be seeing you soon, so just stay alive."_

"What?" Naruto voiced out loud. What did he mean? Real deal for what? The way he worded 'messing with him' he didn't say it like he was going to be poking and prodding like the people that had captured him last time. And another thing, if they wanted to capture him then why have a sniper and a heavy arms specialist after him? Those two professions didn't exactly scream out the message that they were trying to take him alive.

Whatever, he was still running for it. The fact that there was still a sniper out and about was at the top of his list of priorities. Unless Vulcan Raven had a jeep stashed nearby where Naruto left him he wasn't going to catch him, not that it would even do any good in this terrain. Whoever the person that had been in his head was, they weren't around either.

Naruto kept on running, barely taking notice as he managed to exit the forest as he was more concerned with not tripping on the rocky uneven ground he was running on. Up ahead he saw a crevice. That must have been why the guy in his head told him that this way was a dead end. Unfortunately for his pursuers there was no such thing as a dead end for Naruto Uzumaki.

"This better work!" Naruto said to himself as he took off and jumped at full speed, clearing most of the gap before he knew he wouldn't make it for sure. Naruto put his fingers up in the cross seal, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A clone appeared directly below Naruto and allowed Naruto to use its head as a stepping stone which allowed Naruto to get a second chance to launch the rest of the way across the distance, bringing him to a rolling stop on the other side, "Safe!"

"Not quite."

Naruto turned around to find a man that looked like he had come right out of an old cowboy movie standing nearby leaning against a boulder, looking at him in amusement. Naruto stood back up and rubbed the space between his eyes, "Ugh… What do you want? Why are you guys after me?" He said before pointing his SOCOM at the man.

The man let out a chuckle and pushed himself off of the boulder, "Why you ask? We're the ones that told you to come out here in the first place." He saw Naruto give him a confused look before realization set in over the young blonde, "There you go. Do you get it yet? Now tell me who we are?"

"FOXHOUND." Naruto answered for the man and for himself as he now remembered what the man who had led him out there said right before everything started, "Why did you guys try to kill me?"

"What better place to test whether or not you had the chops to join than in the field?" The man said with a grandiose gesture before pointing his fingers at Naruto like a gun, "If you had been killed then you wouldn't have been quite good enough for us right? We're not just going to let some yahoo that thinks he can shoot a gun half-straight join. Anyone can pass a little test. We aren't looking for good test takers. We're here to find people that can actually get the job done."

Naruto raised an eyebrow as he tried to put all of this together, "So all of this was just some big field test?" The man nodded, "And if I had failed I would have been killed." Another nod, "Then how do I know the test still isn't on?"

"Because I didn't shoot you out of the air when you jumped that little ditch back there." The man said, pulling out a revolver and spinning it in a showy manner on his finger before holstering it again just as quickly, "You technically already passed when you neutralized Raven instead of just running away. If you had just run away then we would have all been playing hunt the brat until we brought you down or you made it back to the village, if you had done that you would have passed too. Wolf kept shooting at you just because she hadn't had enough fun with you for her tastes and Mantis just wanted to mess with the new blood."

'And I want to join these people?' Naruto wondered to himself outrageously. Still he hadn't put his gun down, still aiming at the older man who didn't seem uncomfortable at all at having a weapon pointed at him. He wasn't about to get himself screwed over all over again if he was still conscious to do something about it, "And how did you find me so fast? I've been moving too fast. There was no way you were keeping up with me." No one could keep up with him, he knew that much. He had been on the run for a better part of an hour after losing Vulcan Raven. Nobody could keep up with him cutting his kind of pace for an hour.

"Our resident psychic found the direction that you were going in." The man tapped his head with a finger, signaling that Naruto's brain had been picked for the information, "I just got myself to this spot and waited for you. To tell you the truth I really want to fight you hot-shot." The man admitted, his fingers wiggling in anticipation of drawing his guns, "I just want to show a punk like you that he's not all that great. But you passed so I'm under orders to leave you alone and bring you back to the village."

For some reason hearing the disappointment in the man's voice at the prospect of not being able to fight him made Naruto feel that he was being sincere about everything that had been said. At least sincere enough to put his gun down, "Well let's go then." Naruto said, "I'd like to take a look at the almighty FOXHOUND unit."

XxX

Being led around by another man that claimed to be representing FOXHOUND for the second time in one day didn't exactly make Naruto too happy. Good thing this time he had a kunai stashed directly up the sleeve of his jacket in case things got out of hand. Man he hated not knowing things…

Eventually he was led to a bar in town that his guide opened the door to. Naruto stared at him warily, not really willing to give his back to anyone if he could help it. The cowboy simply sighed and shook his head as he walked in himself, "Boss I brought the kid back. Sorry it took so long, he was running the wrong way."

Naruto walked in with a dry look on his face and saw that the bar was mostly bare with the exception of a beautiful blonde woman sitting at a table in the corner that seemed to be looking at him with a smirk and a scrutinizing eye. He then noticed the sniper rifle that she had directly at her side and realized that she had been the one shooting at him. She could see the look on his face when he realized this and winked at him in return, getting Naruto to turn his attention elsewhere as she laughed softly, "Such a child…" He heard her say loud enough for him to catch.

Before he could open his mouth to snap back at her he then saw the bearded Colombian man that had led him up the mountain in the first place, "You! You bastard! I almost got my goddamn lights sniped out because of you by _her_!" He finished, pointing over at the woman in the corner who waved at him.

"If I were really trying to kill you little boy there wouldn't have been any 'almost' about it." The sniper woman commented lightly in something of a sing-song voice before popping some pills that Naruto couldn't see well enough in the dimly lit bar to identify.

The man laughed only now his voice sounded different, more American, "It was my job kid. I'm not much for the actual fighting… I leave that to the others. My job is deception. Nothing personal eh?"

Naruto then looked away from the man towards the last person in the building, a man with long blonde hair sitting all the way at the bar in a trench coat with no shirt underneath. He wore grey pants and black combat boots. He turned around on his stool and offered a smirk at the youngest person in the room, "So you managed to pass you little field test." He said in a British accent. Something about this guy put Naruto off somewhat. He didn't like the way he looked at him, "Congratulations on your induction into FOXHOUND on a probational basis."

"What's this about probation?" All eyes drifted towards the door where the massive frame of Vulcan Raven walked in with large thudding footsteps. He dropped the remains of his M61 Vulcan weapon on the ground and glared at Naruto who had turned to face him, easily bumping the smaller boy out of the way with his shoulder as he walked further inside. The sour mood of the large man seemed to get a few laughs out of all of the others.

"I guess it's time for introductions." The man at the bar, who Naruto guessed was the leader by the way the sniper woman and the man masquerading as a Colombian got out of their seats and walked over, forming a line in front of Naruto with the cowboy-looking guy and even Raven, "I am the field commander of the FOXHOUND unit. I specialize in vehicles of all kind especially all kinds of aircraft. You may call me Liquid Snake or Boss."

The cowboy smirked at hearing that, "I thought you didn't want to be called by that last title."

Liquid returned his smirk with full intent, "Let's just say I've decided to embrace my station to its fullest." He then turned back to Naruto and pointed at the Colombian man, "This is our resident master of disguise, Decoy Octopus." The man being introduced bowed to Naruto as if he were a theater actor.

Naruto let out a grunt of acknowledgement. He never really liked being tricked into things, "Well I guess your codename fits…" He said as he referenced how he had played the decoy to lure Naruto out there in the first place.

Liquid continued on down the line, introducing the female sniper next, "And this is our lovely sharpshooter that has already gotten rather acquainted with you from afar. You can call her Sniper Wolf however."

"We've kind of met." Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head, "Your bullet met the back of my clone's head. That really hurt." He said in his best voice trying to convey being upset… but with her jacket open the way it was it was kind of hard to stay mad.

"Better him than you." Sniper Wolf quipped, still looking at him in her rather unnervingly pleasant manner. What was up with her? Catherine never smiled at him like that unless she wanted something or he was in trouble for something.

Naruto gave her a deadpan look, "It might as well have been me. I can honestly say I'm the only one out of all of you that knows what it feels like to get shot in the head. It sucks by the way, in case you were wondering. I'd rather get shot in the chest."

Sniper Wolf's smirk seemed to grow at that as she spoke lowly, "I'll remember that for the next time." Next time? Next time his ass, there wasn't going to be a next time. But man that accent was sexy… wait why was he thinking about that right now? She shot his clone in the head… which was like shooting him in the head. So by proxy she shot him in the head. And that didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have.

"Next up…" Liquid said moving towards the largest man in the group, patting him on the shoulder, "We have our heavy weapons/explosive ordinance specialist and resident shaman Vulcan Raven. I'm certain you two know each other already." That just sounded all different kinds of smarmy. Yeah, Naruto just didn't like Liquid's condescending tone at all. He just knew it was directed right at him. It didn't help that he was rocking the boat with him and Raven either.

"Uh yeah." Naruto said, trying to give a hearty grin to the large Inuit who seemed intent on drilling a hole through him with his eyes, "Sorry about the gatling gun but you were shooting at me." He extended his hand as a gesture of good faith, "And if I'm going to be working with you I think we should start over." Raven stared at Naruto's hand before putting a small smile on his face and taking it, "There. Wait, actually that's kind of tight…"

Raven's grin resurfaced as he held a tight grip on Naruto's hand, "I look forward to seeing just what you can do with that power hidden inside of you little one. Do not disappoint me now." He said before letting go so that Naruto could nurse the tiny bones in his hand that were probably all broken after such a 'hearty' handshake.

As Naruto shook his hand out, Liquid moved over to a vacant spot in the lineup. Naruto just stared at the man as he stood with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face, as if he were waiting for something. Naruto's instincts were screaming at him to stay aware and he was, but from what he didn't know. Everyone in the bar was already standing in front of him.

"_Ooh that's interesting. Such a cute little girl, and she's your sister too? Not by blood of course but of course beggars with no family can't be choosers can they? Your life is very interesting. I don't think a comic book could play out the way yours did."_

There was that damned voice in his head again. And all of a sudden certain things flashed through Naruto's mind, "Get out of my goddamned head!" Naruto exclaimed angrily, his eyes flashing red momentarily, something that didn't escape any of the onlooking FOXHOUND unit's attention, especially the attention of the man who actually had been diving inside of Naruto's mind for kicks.

Suddenly a hand rested on Naruto's shoulder and he turned to glare at the person who grabbed him. It was a pale skinny bald man with a gas mask on his face. He had a barcode tattoo on the left side of his bald head and on both of his shoulders as well as many different kinds of scars on his head that kind of reminded Naruto of that Ibiki guy he met during the chunin exams. He wore a sleeveless black leather outfit and black combat boots as well as long leather gloves that ran all the way up to his bicep. Throughout the outfit there were leather straps and across his chest looked something like a leather harness. He also didn't seem to have a weapon on him at all.

Naruto didn't necessarily like the man's hand on his shoulder and expressed as much with his glare and growl, but that didn't seem to unnerve the man too much as he spoke to Naruto, "Your mind… it is exquisite. I dare say it's my favorite mind to have attempted to read in many years. You have a glorious dark side to you. I can't wait to see it in person."

Liquid took this moment to interject and break up the tension between the two before anything could start and get out of hand, "This is Psycho Mantis. He is our psychic expert and master of psychological warfare. And he should know by now not to dive into minds of members of the unit." He said finishing with a pointed look at Mantis who simply laughed in response.

"Sorry Boss, but he wasn't a part of the unit yet so I figured the rule didn't apply to him." Yeah, Naruto could tell he and this Mantis guy weren't going to get along very well. Apparently he liked what he saw for the short moments he had to look through Naruto's head. As long as he didn't see the Kyuubi though things were cool. A lot of the other things could be explained away if it came to that, he hoped.

Next the man that looked like an older cowboy walked forward, spurs jangling as he did so, "I'll introduce myself if you don't mind Boss." Liquid nodded his consent and the cowboy bowed deeply before standing up and pulling both of his Colt Single Action Army Revolvers, spinning them on his fingers and throwing them into the air like an old-school trick shooter. He then suddenly holstered the guns and gave a two fingered gun-like gesture with both hands pointing at Naruto, "The greatest gunfighter in the world and FOXHOUND's interrogation expert… Revolver Ocelot at your service."

By now everyone had been introduced, thus making it Naruto's turn. He didn't realize this until all eyes were on him for the same reason, "Oh, is it my turn?" He asked sheepishly.

Ocelot rolled his eyes, "Well it would certainly be reasonable to introduce yourself the way we did brat."

Naruto let out a nervous chuckle. Having to introduce oneself to a group of people that had tried to kill him not even a few hours prior was not something that you just jumped into, but Naruto being Naruto and wanting to be friendly, as friendly as he could be in this situation, decided to do so… since if he didn't Psycho Mantis had probably gleamed enough to do so himself with some added facts that Naruto would rather not let slip at the moment.

"Well…" Naruto started, scratching the side of his face, "My name is Naruto Uzumaki. If I had to guess I would say that I specialize in stealth, hand-to-hand combat, infiltration, small arms weaponry, and survival I guess." He then stopped suddenly as if he had forgotten something, "Hey by the way what's my codename? Because if I get to pick my own then I want to be called-."

Liquid started laughing, cutting Naruto off before he could say what he wished his codename to be, "I'm sorry but you don't get your codename yet. You're on probation. We don't even know if you're really going to wind up being a member of FOXHOUND in the end. Until your probational period is over you don't get a codename."

"Probation?" Naruto said incredulously with a slack-jawed look on his face, "What does that even mean?"

Sniper Wolf walked up to Naruto and ran a hand over his cheek, "It means that instead of just answering to Liquid, you answer to all of us. If any of us ask you to do anything, like fetching me some sort of supplies or ammunition, or to gear up and get ready to head out and take target training with me…"

"Or learn how to fix my Vulcan, or show me your 'survival' skills…." Raven added with a grin.

"Pretty much anything we want you to do…" Decoy Octopus said, an amused look on his face as well.

Mantis added, laughing at Naruto's rotten luck, "Then you pretty much have to do it…"

"Basically on demand or else you stay on probation." Ocelot finished with a nasty grin on his face, "You're not really FOXHOUND, you're basically FOXHOUND reserve."

Liquid nodded, he was glad that his unit seemed to be all for his plan. It would serve its purpose later as well if things went the way that they should, "Your probation will last until I see fit to induct you officially as a member of FOXHOUND so until then you belong to us… Mantis can't go through your mind without your permission though." The commander finished, getting a groan of disappointment from Mantis

And for some reason that did not make Naruto feel as secure as he thought it would at first. As far as he understood he was at the very bottom of the pecking order, 'Well doesn't that suck a little bit? So I'm pretty much their pet until I prove that I'm worth having around? That could take forever!' With a lunatic like Psycho Mantis in the ranks Naruto was sure that his period of hazing would be a hellish time to say the very least.

Wolf's hand seemed to linger on his cheek for a while though before she actually tugged lightly on it, seeming fascinated with its appearance, "These whisker-marks of yours are rather cute… they make you look like some sort of animal. Maybe a wolf?" She said in an interested voice.

Well _maybe_ things wouldn't suck so badly… maybe. But Naruto wasn't holding his breath on that one.

XxX

(Colombia – May 2004 – Naruto: Age 17)

Naruto was punching away at the trunk of a tree with taped up fists and smoldering anger, "I. Hate. My. Job." He said, with each hard word accentuating an even harder punch. It had been four months since he had become FOXHOUND's probie and he could honestly say that it sucked. While the others were being dispatched all over the world with missions all on their own Naruto had to stay behind in their temporary base of operations in Colombia where they were assisting the Colombian government with their problems.

Not that Naruto ever actually got to handle them himself.

All he had done for four months was run their errands, get their food, procure their ammunition, and set their contacts for the actual members' real missions. The only times he had ever really been taken with on a mission was with Sniper Wolf, and all he did in those missions was to stay hidden at a nearby distance to watch her back or in the most interesting scenario to serve as bait for a target, she wasn't even using him as a spotter. And sometimes they would wait for days… she wouldn't even move for the entire length of time therefore neither could he.

As FOXHOUND's glorified gofer, Naruto was allowed to drive all different kinds of jeeps, hummers, and the like in order to get the operatives what they needed when they needed it. He was even taught by Liquid to man an attack helicopter just in case he needed Naruto to commandeer and bring him one… he never did much to Naruto's disappointment.

He had been allowed very minor contact with his pseudo-family, Master Miller and Catherine, he barely got to speak to them, one call to only one of them per month, and he never got to really write them letters since it could wind up with them being compromised. Miller told him to use his calls on Catherine more than him because she wanted to talk to him far more than he needed to. Naruto still felt as if Miller knew more about what may or may not have happened to him when he was supposedly wounded, but the man never alluded to it. Naruto never told him, deciding the ignorance was bliss approach would be the best. Naruto still hadn't gotten any closer to learning a damn thing about the people who had taken him a year ago.

Vulcan Raven hadn't exactly been as hostile to Naruto as he thought he would have been after his Vulcan M61 had been repaired. When the man was around and felt like looking for Naruto he was actually tied for the most mellow of the FOXHOUND unit. He would go and head into the forests and mountains around where they had set up shop and somehow find Naruto's general location, but not Naruto himself. It was as if he made a game out of trying to locate the boy without shooting the area to tatters like the first time they had met. Naruto had also started to pick up Raven's ways of getting in touch with the spirits as was his way as a shaman. Naruto found it a good way to train his chakra control, something that he needed to do since he never found another exercise after learning to walk on water.

Speaking of the strange things that Naruto could do, Psycho Mantis became sort of obsessed with trying to press Naruto's buttons and get the boy to snap on him, saying that he was going to pull Naruto's dark side from him if it was the last thing that he did. He wanted to feel the fear in person that he felt when he had gone through Naruto's mind for just a moment. The only thing Naruto could think of that he would have been alluding to would have been the Kyuubi, and there was no way Naruto was going to show anyone that just as some sort of party trick for kicks.

Naruto never saw Decoy Octopus around. He was gone on missions more than anyone else in the entire unit. When he was around he was usually in disguise, and if Naruto even knew the target that Octopus was trying to portray he couldn't even talk to him, as in his attempt to immerse himself into character he didn't have time for a kid that wasn't even a recognized member of FOXHOUND. Too immersed in his work Naruto would say that Octopus was, but he'd be damned if he didn't say he was good at it. Better than any Henge Naruto had seen in his world for sure.

Liquid still didn't see very much in Naruto, but it wasn't Naruto's fault in the shinobi's own opinion. How was he supposed to prove that he was worth anything if all he did were jobs that anyone could do? Still, Naruto refrained from mouthing off, remembering how Miller said that most superior officers didn't respond well to an opinionated recruit the higher up in the food chain they were. Well Liquid Snake was definitely one of those types. Naruto still remembered what had happened when he had asked Liquid about his codename and if he had known Solid Snake, the man Naruto had heard about from Master Miller again and again. He hadn't been looked at with so much hatred in years. He then heatedly ordered Naruto to patrol the mountains alone until someone was sent to relieve him. Ocelot ended up being the one coming to bring him back… three days later. Naruto could say that he hated serving under Liquid Snake, and made certain to voice it when he was sure that no one would hear him and report it back to the man himself.

Now Naruto's relationship with Ocelot, while not the best in the unit was certainly far better than Naruto's rapport with Liquid. Naruto more or less despised the field commander of FOXHOUND for both not believing in him and treating him like crap, more so than any other of the members. Ocelot at least believed enough in Naruto to not treat him as if he was beneath the rest of the unit. Ocelot seemed to value Naruto's abilities, and instantly believed Naruto's claims of being a ninja. The old gunslinger was a total showoff, but he knew his stuff although he would never let Naruto touch his SAA pistols.

He told Naruto that revolvers weren't really his style anyway. Speed was more of Naruto's thing. Speed, speed, and more speed. He didn't need the power of a revolver as long as he could outquick his enemies. He always said that Naruto would get his chance to prove himself one day soon, and Naruto always took that as him saying 'I'll fight you and then tell Liquid to take you off of probation.' Whenever Naruto challenged him though, Ocelot would always pat Naruto on the head and tell him it wasn't his time yet. He'd always walk off with an infuriating smirk, as if he didn't take Naruto seriously at heart despite the fact that he would say that the boy was good.

After learning more about the others he had found out that Ocelot had been a career soldier that got his start in the Soviet Union, high up in the rankings ever since he was a teenager in GRU, earning much fame since the 1960's. He had battled with the best in the world and lived to tell the tale, even against Big Boss himself on multiple occasions. This made Naruto only want to fight the man more, as if beating him was his ticket to proving himself a capable operative. But no matter what Ocelot would always respond to his challenges the same way, "Not quite good enough kid."

And after being rejected for a fight again, Naruto found himself in the mountains again, using his downtime once again to vent his growing frustration. He got more action when he was a normal soldier than now. And beating up rocks and trees wasn't helping to alleviate his stress.

"So here you are again little probie." Naruto heard the telling accent of Sniper Wolf behind him, however he didn't stop practicing his striking on the unfortunate tree he had chosen as his mark on this day, "One has to wonder why you never practice with weapons when you're upset."

Naruto let out a grunt as he switched to throwing kicks at the tree, "I don't need a weapon, my hands are my weapons. And who said I was upset?" He finished with a thrust kick before turning around to face the senior member of FOXHOUND with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.

A small laugh came from the woman as she pulled Naruto's cheek, "You've been sulking about for three days. You're even starting to unnerve some of the Colombian soldiers stationed around. Now what's the matter?" She asked in a motherly voice, funny because she was only seven years his senior.

Sniper Wolf was the other operative tied in Naruto's book with Vulcan Raven for the most mellow member of the entire unit. She was usually very easy-going except for her slight sadistic side as she took pleasure in the occasions when she would ask Naruto to create clones to have mock sniping mission targets. Still she would give him advice. Good places to go off and hide to when he wanted to be alone, ways to avoid getting on Liquid's bad side. She even sometimes went well out of her way to keep him company for a bit on some of Liquid's hazing patrol assignments. Still her fascination with the whisker-marks on his cheeks was weird. Hot, but still weird. People usually didn't like them very much at all or made fun of them. Wolf on the other hand seemed to adore them.

"…You really should radio me if you're looking for me you know." Naruto said with a sigh as he didn't know whether it was that fact that she knew rubbing his cheeks calmed him down or if it was the fact that he was dying to gripe to someone about this, "How seriously do you guys take me? I want to know. I'm basically your errand boy. And Liquid hates my guts… the jackass. If I ever get the chance I'm going to shove my foot right up his uptight overconfident-."

"Naruto calm down." Wolf said, cutting him off from saying anything else that could be seen as insubordinate, "Now tell me what rule number 97 is. It's the one that you're most familiar with by now I'm sure."

Naruto then robotically began to recite said rule, "The words 'live' and 'hero' are mutually exclusive terms."

"No Naruto, try again." Wolf said in a chiding voice.

"Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity." Naruto said, getting a flick on the ear, "Ow."

"Vulgar, guttermouthed little probie… as if that one is the rule _you're_ most familiar with. Give me a break." Wolf muttered before cursing lowly in Kurdish, making a hand gesture telling him to try again.

Naruto shrugged and rattled off another, "A Purple Heart just means that you were smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive." He then saw Wolf frown and shake her head, "Oh, sorry that had nothing to do with anything we were talking about so how about this one? The self importance of a superior is always inversely proportional to his place in the overall hierarchy… as is his deviousness and mischievousness." Naruto finished with a grin.

Wolf shook her head again and lightly rapped Naruto on his, "No. You certainly have a smart mouth when it comes to the commander don't you? Did you get the numbers to those when Ocelot made you read them?" Naruto laughed sheepishly giving her the answer, "I didn't think so."

This made Naruto feel a little bit better but then he realized that he was still rather upset, "Ugh, I've got a codename for myself if you guys aren't going to give me one. How about Scavenger Gopher? Because that's what I seem qualified to be these days." He looked at Sniper Wolf to see her seriously thinking about that name, "Don't you dare take that to Liquid or tell anyone else I said that, I swear to Kami. With my luck I'd actually end up with that name out of spite."

"I won't repeat that name, I promise." Wolf said, getting a few chuckles out of the prospect of Naruto actually having that be his codename, "Hey I know what would cheer you up. Do you want to go with me on a mission?"

Naruto's face went deadpan, "And be your pack mule before laying around just watching you look through a scope for three days straight? No thank you. You're actually asking me for permission this time instead of just making me go with you, I'm so happy." He finished with fake enthusiasm.

"Come on little probie." Wolf said as they both started walking back towards the village that they had been staying in, "You know you like my company more than any of the others."

Naruto started listing things on his fingers, "Liquid's a dick, Mantis is creepy and keeps trying to get into my head, I don't even know what Octopus really looks like, Raven likes making stuff explode and that's cool but I can only take so much of that, Ocelot won't fight me, won't let me use a revolver, and makes me shine his boots for kicks when I come around, and Liquid's a dick. Did I miss anything?"

His slandering of their commanding officer aside, he had good points as to why it would be hard for him to spend time with anyone else, "Yes actually." Wolf commented, "You forgot to mention why you like spending time with me. Is it because I made that silly promise to make a man out of you?" She said in a teasing voice.

'Note to self: Tell Sniper Wolf that your 18th birthday is in October.' Naruto fought back involuntary red cheeks and quirked his eyebrows in thought for a moment before speaking, using the same listing pattern as before, "Okay, reasons: you're hot obviously, you're the only woman I've seen in forever, you barely make me do stupid stuff compared to everyone else, and you and Ocelot are the only ones that don't turn me in to Liquid for the things I say about him… though for you I think that's just because all of the diazepam and pentazemin you pop makes you just not care about my general conduct."

A part of Wolf wanted to tear into him about talking about her use of the muscle relaxants and anxiety drugs but just couldn't find it in her to care too much about what he said. Something Naruto picked up on immediately.

"You see?" Naruto said, pointing at her accusingly, "You should have beat the crap out of me for saying that out loud! And that's why I like you so much Wolf, because you just don't care what I do."

"And what about _your_ addiction to ramen?" Wolf quipped, a small smile on her lips and hands on her shapely hips as she looked over at the more or less even-heighted Naruto as he looked over at her in surprise, "Yes Mantis told us about that. That was why everyone was laughing at you whenever you walked around us for the entire second month. You were so irritable by the end of the first month we thought you were into some kind of opiate, not noodles."

Naruto frowned and punched into his palm, "I fucking hate Mantis… so much."

Wolf pulled Naruto into a side hug as they kept walking, "Yes I know, it's why most people do… except for the him killing them part. So how about that mission?"

Why the hell not? He was sick and tired of just hanging out at base in Colombia anyway. Maybe he'd get lucky and get some action… one way or another. Man he needed a girlfriend. Good luck getting one with a job like his, "*sigh* Fine… I'll go on the mission… Where are we going by the way?"

"This time? I was supposed to head out to Iraq. I asked for this assignment personally." Wolf said matter-of-factly. He might as well be told where they were going since he agreed to go so amicably.

"…I hate the desert." Naruto muttered, his bad mood back once again.

XxX

(Russian Far East – December 2004 – Naruto: Age 18)

Having lived in Alaska for as long as he had and having never been to Russia, Naruto was super-pumped when Ocelot told him they'd be taking a short little trip past the Bering Strait to take a little retrieval mission while the others were moving their headquarters for their newest primary mission. The location of the newest mission also left Naruto pretty psyched with the fact that it would be in Alaska, maybe he'd get to go home for a bit.

"You aren't going home kid." Ocelot told him as if he was reading his mind, getting an irritable grumble from the blonde as they were both dressed in deep winter equipment, Naruto's usual headband covering his forehead as usual. They had been forced to walk the last ten miles to the meeting point of wherever they were going, but Ocelot told him that this mission was of the utmost importance and he wasn't going out there alone, so he was either taking Vulcan Raven or Naruto because either of them would have been used to these kind of conditions more than any of the others. Besides, it cheered him up so much to hear that he was actually going to do something, who wouldn't have taken the kid with them?

Okay, so it was mostly because Ocelot wanted to take the unit pack mule with him in case there were things that needed to be carried back, but as long as the kid himself didn't know that then everything was fine.

"But it's Christmas!" Naruto complained to Ocelot as they continued walking through the snow and ice on the way to their destination, "I've never missed a holiday like this. Kitty and Master Miller and going to miss me." Naruto wasn't much for the holiday, but Catherine loved it. It was the one time that she knew without a doubt she was going to see him, and Naruto returned the sentiment. He hadn't seen either of them in over a year. He didn't know when he had started thinking of it as home, but it felt nice. It was somewhere that he knew he could find people that cared about him and he wasn't going to have it any better in this world than that.

"Tough then." Ocelot said plainly, "Our new assignment is too important for you to go on leave right now. You aren't off of probation yet either so you don't really get to leave without Boss's permission." And as long as that was the final point of whether or not he would get to leave then he might as well give the call that he wouldn't be there that year, because Liquid sure as hell wasn't going to let him go, "How's your Russian?" Ocelot then asked suddenly, taking Naruto's thoughts away from his hated field commander.

"What?" Naruto said, snapping out of his fantasy of beating the crap out of Liquid Snake with his bare hands and then walking straight home over his injured body, "Oh, it's alright. It's not the best though."

Because of the possibility of travelling just about anywhere to work, Naruto had learned some of the other languages that he might have found useful. Psycho Mantis taught him Russian in exchange for five minutes inside of Naruto's head which was granted since Naruto could kick him out if he started getting too close to the Kyuubi or something else. While in Iraq with Sniper Wolf she started to teach him some Arabic after he almost got himself killed trying to protect some Kurds that had managed to get themselves caught in the crossfire of an ambush he somehow found himself in. He already knew Spanish, English, and Japanese so he had more or less five languages that he knew.

"Good, good." Ocelot said as the site of a well-sized encampment made itself seen by both of them, "Now remember just keep your mouth shut until spoken to. We'll be out of here before you know it. Don't get us shot."

Naruto scoffed and rolled his eyes behind his protective eyewear, "I never get us shot. Who do you think you're talking to here?"

"The baby rookie that doesn't know enough Russian to ask for directions." Ocelot returned spiritedly, "We're getting payment from a mercenary unit that we're to be working with soon in the future so I want you to be on your best behavior. All I want for Christmas from you brat is us not getting chased back to Alaska with a bullet in my ass."

"I could carry you." Naruto remarked with a careless shrug, expressing as if Ocelot getting shot in the backside wasn't a big deal.

"Not the point kid…" Ocelot growled lowly getting a smirk out of Naruto. That put the score at Naruto Uzumaki – 3, Revolver Ocelot – 73. As they neared the encampment, Ocelot hushed Naruto up, "Alright here we go kid, remember to shut up and be good."

As they made their way to the armed guard out in front of the base, they were stopped by a small squad of mercenaries in winter camouflage, holding them up with AKS-74u weapons. Ocelot merely began speaking in Russian to them, allowing Naruto to barely pick up what he was saying, something about being there to finish the deal with a man named Gurlukovich…

Fuck.

Naruto was lucky it was so damn cold out there as they walked into the heart of the mercenary base because he'd probably be sweating at the moment if it hadn't been. He had killed over a dozen of these people a year and a half ago. They knew his name before he ever knew them, and he was pretty sure that a good number of them knew his face.

"Comrade!"

"Comrade!" Ocelot stepped forward and gave a grand hug to the man that Naruto assumed was the Gurlukovich that was the leader of these mercenaries. He was a large man around Ocelot's age wearing a Russian hat and brown down coat, "Who is this? Is he one of FOXHOUND?" He asked with suspicion as he noticed Naruto with Ocelot.

"Don't be so paranoid Sergei. This is just FOXHOUND's little baby probie." Ocelot said with a smirk at Naruto's expense, "He's still a little too pure for being an actual member of the unit, but he wouldn't harm a fly. If it helps you can have someone keep an eye on him until it's time for us to go."

Sergei seemed to accept this as he motioned for the figure next to him wearing her hood tightly as well as a large pair of goggles, clearly female, to go forward to Naruto, "Olga keep a watch over the young one until Shalashaska and I finish up our business."

Olga? Double fuck. She certainly finished growing the rest of the way up at least.

The woman nodded and moved forward to look at Naruto, motioning for him to follow her. Naruto did as instructed, following Olga and hoping that Ocelot pulled him out of there with whatever they were there to get before he was found out. Unfortunately that was not to be since Olga actually turned to get a good look at him and her jaw nearly dropped once she recognized the insignia on his headband as well as the marks on his cheeks, "You! Naruto Uzumaki!"

Naruto started backing away from Olga slowly with his hands in a defensive position, "Hey Olga, long time no see, you're looking well." She wasn't still upset with getting beaten in Iraq was she? It was over a year ago, she had to have forgotten some of that fight.

"Oh really?" He heard her say rather heatedly before she pulled down her hood and took off her goggles, showing Naruto a thin scar that ran diagonally from just over her right eye on her forehead across the bridge of her nose to run down next to the left side of her lips.

Okay, maybe she didn't forget. Maybe she had a daily little reminder that Naruto took the full measure of her own offense and her father's soldiers and wound up kicking their asses and repelling them.

"Oh come on it isn't that bad at all." Naruto said, now realizing that the jig was up so he pulled his own hood down to reveal his spiky blonde hair. Why be all tentative about it? They both remembered what happened. He had already beaten her once. So what if she had at least one-hundred times the backup this time, he was Naruto Uzumaki… for as much good as that seemed to be doing him these days, "You're still cute." He said honestly.

Olga seemed to be holding back on punching Naruto in the face or pulling a gun on him. He couldn't tell which one it was from just the expression of anger on her face, "You're still a pig I see. Immature and playing at being a soldier, same as the last time. You clearly didn't learn anything from nearly getting killed." She said with a rather haughty attitude.

Now Naruto wasn't about to sit there and take that from her. No matter what happened to him he was still going to be Naruto, and Naruto hated being looked down on and underestimated… especially by people he had already proven that was better than.

Naruto leveled a glare on her, "Oh I'm so sorry I scarred your pretty little face after you _shot me in the goddamned chest _after I tried to disengage. You got to go home after that, you want to know where I went?" Olga nodded, meeting his glare with one of her own, "Well so would I because I don't fucking know! I woke up three months later with some bitch making a lab rat out of me for my genes or something. You got to stay with your comrades, I only had myself, and if I could scar then I'm pretty damn sure I'd have some physical ones instead of just the mental ones."

"What's your point?" Olga said, getting impatient with the blonde just like she had the last time they had met.

"My point is fuck you!" Naruto snapped at her heatedly, "You started it, I finished it, and now it's done so get over it. Or if you really want to we can take a little walk a few miles away from here and settle up if you feel lucky." He suggested spitefully, "Because this time I'll beat the hell out of you _without_ a weapon at all and drag you right back here. I don't kill for no good reason." By now Naruto noticed that there were a few of the Gurlukovich mercenaries with their guns pointed at him, "This is a private fucking conversation thank you!" He yelled at them.

Olga held her hand up to stop them from possibly shooting at Naruto. As much as she didn't like him she couldn't just let a bunch of stupid grunts kill him… he'd probably take at least a dozen with him in the firefight it would take to put him down. This was important business, more important than any issue she had with Naruto over a little skirmish in the past, "I don't have any pressing issue with you Uzumaki. I was just surprised to see someone like you in a place like this." She said as the other Gurlukovich Mercenaries backed off. Olga yelled at them in Russian, Naruto picked up enough to understand that it meant to mind their own business.

Seeing them all scatter after she yelled at them put a grin on his face, one that dropped once her cold piercing eyes turned back to him, "So are we cool?" Naruto asked, putting his hand out, "For what it's worth I really am sorry for the scar, but I think you look just fine with it."

"I didn't ask you though did I?" Olga stated flatly with her arms crossed over her chest as she stared down at Naruto's still outstretched hand, "I'm not some delicate figurine made of glass Uzumaki. Didn't you hear that chivalry is dead?"

Naruto was still waiting for her to shake his hand, not willing to take no for an answer as he just wanted their battle put behind him, "Nope. And trying to be nice isn't me treating you like you're made of glass, I just like being nice to people. It's better than shooting at them."

Olga finally shook his hand firmly, grabbing tighter and not letting go when Naruto attempted to pull away, "One day I _will_ be getting a rematch with you,and I _will_ defeat you. Don't forget that." She said in a challenging manner, "All of your little powers, I'll find some way to overcome them and I'll show you just who the better fighter is. Friends and enemies can change in a heartbeat Uzumaki, especially for mercenaries."

Naruto didn't take the challenge as offensively as Olga thought he would, just smiling at her as she refused to let go of his hand, "So does that mean that we're getting to the friend part or what?" At that moment, Naruto's radio went off and he answered, "Ocelot. What's going on?"

"_We're done kid, it's time to move out. So go ahead and kiss Sergei's daughter goodbye and have her show you to the tarmac."_

Naruto couldn't help but crack the radio off of his forehead at that and Ocelot obviously heard the impact because he laughed as if he had. Naruto put the radio back at his mouth, not even bothering to look at Olga out of risk of fracturing a newly formed relationship as he responded, "I swear, I hate every single one of you in FOXHOUND you know that right? You all treat me like I'm in high school or something."

"_You're 18."_

"And have never been in any school period so why treat me like I'm some normal teenager with hormones?"

"…_Because you are?"_

Naruto just stayed on the line in silence before giving a pointed answer, "Good point, fuck you." He looked over at Olga and saw her giving him a deadpan face, "I'll be there in a little bit." He then turned his radio off to avoid any of Ocelot's other smart-ass remarks because he knew that the man had more. He then finally addressed Olga, "Hey I'm sorry about that, Ocelot's just usually kind of a-."

Olga cut him off by walking past him, "I am well aware of Shalashaska's sense of humor. It's among one of the things that he and my father share besides nationality. Follow me if you wish to find the tarmac."

Only able to let out a sigh, Naruto followed after her in defeat. Ocelot was going to catch hell for that on the way back to Alaska.

XxX

Ocelot put his radio down, chuckling heartily alongside Sergei, "Ah… so everything is all set? Once we begin our operation you'll be prepared to assist us after the initial takeover correct?"

"Of course." Sergei said assertively, "The accord we've struck has a prize for us that is far too valuable to let slip. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring Mother Russia back to her former glory, just like in the days of our youth comrade."

"Yes of course." Ocelot replied, seemingly wholeheartedly. Only Naruto had developed a propensity to tell whether or not Ocelot was lying or if he was insincere. The boy would be an amazing interrogator if he actually had the stomach for the practice, "Liquid will be happy to hear that we have a powerful ally in our plans, and such a wonderful down payment on our deal." Ocelot said as he looked over at a Hind D attack and transport helicopter.

Sergei then turned somewhat wary, "And what of the boy that you keep with you? You say he isn't even a member of FOXHOUND and yet you have him here. Could he compromise anything?"

"Naruto?" Ocelot said, getting a nod from Sergei, "Don't you worry about him. He isn't a factor in any of this. He doesn't know anything about it at all, and he won't until it's too late to do anything. When the time comes he can either step in line like a good little soldier or get flattened and thrown out of the way. It's as simple as that." Ocelot crossed his arms.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Sergei wondered aloud. A potential wildcard was not good for the situation that they were planning.

A grunt came from Ocelot in response, "Liquid would have just told us to make sure he had met with an accident by now but even he realizes that the brat is damn good. Wolf couldn't get him killed in Iraq, and I think she got rather attached to him while they were there and he survived." Ocelot rubbed his mustache as they walked over to the Hind D, "If he doesn't decide to tow the line then the last option is seeing if Mantis can full-on brainwash him. If that fails then we'll have to get rid of him."

"To have to kill a child…" Sergei sounded almost remorseful if that happened to be Naruto's fate. Still, one boy wasn't stopping this plan from taking place, "You will do what you must when the time comes."

Ocelot scoffed, "He's not a child. He hasn't been a child for years." He then saw Naruto walking with Olga in the distance coming towards them, "Hey kid! Do you want to fly this thing to the rendezvous spot with the others? Consider it your Christmas gift!"

"No way! Really?"

Ocelot then let out a laugh, "Okay, maybe there's just some part in there that won't die." At that time, Naruto had sprinted his way over to the Hind D and was marveling over actually getting to fly a top of the line helicopter all the way back to Alaska. Ocelot thought to himself as he watched Naruto climb into the cockpit, 'Sure kid, take this as your little present since you can't go home for Christmas. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you though that one way or another after this is all over with and done you probably won't be going home ever again.'

While Olga stood near the cockpit wondering how this idiot knew how to fly a Russian helicopter well enough to be trusted to fly it across the Bering Strait, Naruto looked towards Ocelot, "We're going to that place in Alaska right? The Fox Archipelago?"

"Yeah you've got it kid." Ocelot said, "We're heading to the nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses Island."

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter is el completo. God I need to get famous for being a fighter because I hate my job and I'm probably not going to get a good job in television broadcasting after I graduate college. Anyway who cares about that, you were just reading.<strong>

**Next chapter is the start of the Shadow Moses series of events… for those of you who know why that means anything at all.**

**Anyway, I'll catch you later. Kenchi out**


	6. In the Shadow of FOXHOUND

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I am currently planning to hold the world's supply of chocolate milk and alcoholic beverages ransom and will be demanding the rights to Naruto and the still beating heart of Hideo Kojima so that his godly lifeblood may give me and my creative thought processes strength.

**Chapter 6: In the Shadow of FOXHOUND**

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><p>Naruto in the cockpit of the Hind D had a massive grin on his face as Ocelot sat in the gunner seat, rolling his eyes at how the kid seemed to be amused with merely flying a chopper. Ocelot himself hadn't felt the novelty of such a thing even before he had been Naruto's age, "Are you honestly enjoying this that much?" He asked Naruto out loud, "You've flown helicopters before, it's not like it's new or anything."<p>

Hey, that didn't mean that he still couldn't enjoy it. Naruto didn't hear him apparently as he was in his own little world at the moment, "The choppa! Get to the choppa!" He said in a loud fake accent before he then snapped out of his little episode and addressed the old Russian cowboy, "I'm sorry, were you saying something?"

Ocelot growled, thinking Naruto had been ignoring him while he had been talking, "Stupid brat… trying to act all hip." He grumbled so that Naruto didn't hear it through his headset.

As they passed over the frigid waters below, Naruto had some thoughts to go over as he had only been told a little bit about why they were finishing up with their business in Colombia to switch their temporary headquarters to Shadow Moses Island, "What are we even doing up here? It seems kind of stupid to put us at a nuclear disposal facility."

"You're definitely in with the bigwigs now brat, this stuff is top-secret." Ocelot commented in amusement at Naruto's question, "The facility isn't really just a nuclear disposal facility. That's a cover, ArmsTech owns it through a dummy corporation and they're using it for the development of Metal Gear REX." He could hear Naruto's silence and could only imagine the look of shock on his face, "Yes… but we're just there to oversee a test of a stealth nuclear warhead conducted by ArmsTech and DARPA."

"Why?" Naruto asked curiously, "What does any of this have to do with us?"

Ocelot once again let out a chuckle at Naruto's naivety at his new station in life, "We're the best kid. Of course they're going to have us there for security. We've got command over the Next-Generation Special Forces until the test is complete in February. They're supposed to be there as a training exercise for them. Right now things aren't ready yet so we're just setting up shop there for the time being."

"Sweet." Naruto said with a grin, "I've finally got command over somebody. I've been waiting for this for four years." He let go of the steering stick and punched his palm, grinding his knuckle into it, "I'm going to abuse my power so hard, I'm going to vent my hatred of Liquid right into-."

"You aren't in command of anybody kid." Ocelot informed Naruto, "You're still just our probie, you're pretty much on the same level as they are."

"But… but… I'm actually FOXHOUND! I work _with_ you guys!" Naruto exclaimed desperately as he grabbed a hold of the steering stick again, "Doesn't that count for something around here? I worked my ass off, got shot in four different continents, and I don't even get any command over a bunch of VR trained wannabes?"

Next-Generation Special Forces were specially trained for 'the future of combat'. They were given simulated virtual reality missions as training. They served as reserve members of FOXHOUND and were deployed as a sort of anti-terrorist unit. Naruto had also heard that they had been supplemented with gene therapy, giving them the genes of the greatest soldier to ever live; Big Boss. This gave them augmented senses, reflexes, and supposedly instinctual combat skill that one could usually only hone with experience.

Naruto didn't really like them that much. He had worked with a few of them, most notably in Iraq when he went on his mission with Sniper Wolf. This bred his true dislike for them since when he found himself pinned down in the middle of a village with a few Kurdish civilians during a scouting mission for Wolf's target they didn't do much of anything to help him, saying it wasn't their mission to support him, only Sniper Wolf. He managed to fight his own way out and keep the civilians safe at the cost of six rounds deposited firmly throughout his arms and torso. At least it got him a kiss from Sniper Wolf since he saved more than a few of her people from dying in the process.

That was just the way the cookie crumbled for him it seemed, "Thems the breaks kid." Ocelot quipped lightly at Naruto's misfortune, "At least you don't have to answer to any of them. You still only take orders from the rest of us. Did you make sure to get your shots so that you don't freeze to death in this weather?"

Naruto scoffed at the question, "No. What do I look like? I don't need the stupid antifreeze glycopeptides to keep from freezing. My body naturally keeps me warm because I'm awesome like that. I pretty much survived outside for a whole two months in Alaska right before I joined you guys." He bragged with a grin, "Master Miller says that my soldier genes are groundbreaking." Apparently groundbreaking enough for him to get kidnapped and experimented on… but why not be proud of what you've got?

"So when we get there I could theoretically send you out naked into the snow to buff the Hind D?" Ocelot suggested with a viciously amused tone.

"I'd rather you didn't." Naruto replied with a twitch in his eye, "Why would you want me to buff the Hind D anyway? It's a military helicopter and it's winter time in Alaska. Neither of those things makes sense. And naked? Shrinkage on an epic scale… I'd really like you more if you didn't make me do that." He then heard Ocelot laughing in his usual manner, "You're a sadistic bastard."

"It comes with the territory of being an interrogator kid." Ocelot said proudly in response, "And speaking of interrogation… tell me how far you got with Sergei's daughter. Did I call you while you were feeling her up? Is that why you were so mad at me?" He said, attempting to tease the blonde.

Naruto thumped his head off of the side of the cockpit, "I hate my job… I hate it so much." Luckily for Naruto he could see Shadow Moses Island in the distance.

XxX

(Shadow Moses Island – January 2005 – Naruto: Age 18)

Things were way calmer while they were stationed at Shadow Moses Island. There weren't members of the unit being dispatched on a routine basis as having to prepare for the top secret test had them forced to pretty much stay there so there was no chance of the secrets slipping. It was the first time Naruto believed that every member of FOXHOUND had been in the same place for that long since he had first joined them a year ago.

It was also the first time he had been involved with something so secret in his career. He wanted to see what the Metal Gear REX looked like, but per usual with his station among the elite unit Liquid Snake blocked him from doing so, not allowing Naruto to the deepest reaches of the base where it was sitting nearly complete. All that remained was for the final bugs to be worked out, all of which would be handled in VR, so Naruto probably wouldn't see the weapon at all.

All he was able to concern himself with was occupying his time somehow, as training with the Genome Soldiers, a nickname for the Next-Generation Special Forces, didn't appeal to him. They didn't seem to like him so as far as Naruto was concerned the feeling was mutual. He would find them staring at him but trying to act as if he wasn't there. It upset him greatly, especially since they were the sole force stationed there. It was the way he had been treated back in Konoha and by Liquid. If he were to be honest with himself he would have rather been back in Colombia playing gofer for the rest of FOXHOUND. It was something to do, and at least they acknowledged him more often than not.

For most of the time however, the unit seemed to be busy. Too busy to usually even give him his daily orders or take the time to haze him. They were usually within the furthest reaches of the facility, out of his reach except for by use of his radio, and it was frowned upon for him to contact them not that he ever needed to in the first place. He was getting bored, and a bored Naruto no matter his setting was a dangerous Naruto for the people around him.

Naruto stood outside of the bathrooms of the barracks portion of the facility seemingly doing nothing other than spinning a kunai around his finger and whistling to himself. In his new station at Shadow Moses Naruto had taken to wearing a customized dark colored ballistic vest and a light grey short sleeved shirt underneath so that he could keep wearing his long sleeves on his left forearm that came just under his elbow. The shirt had what looked to be a loose turtleneck, but this was just a connected half-facemask that Naruto kept down while indoors. It was meant to protect his face outside, this was also why he wore a pair of goggles around his neck, to protect his eyes in intense blizzard conditions even though the cold itself didn't bother him that much. He also wore grey pants, dark boots, and the ever-present blue headband on his head with the leaf emblem set on the metal plate across the forehead of it. Naruto had taken to keeping his hands taped up to better protect them from the elements and damage.

As multiple Genome Soldiers walked past him, wearing black operational gear and carrying FAMAS assault rifles on the way to their assignments, they would take the time to glare at him behind their balaclava that they all seemed to be wearing at most times without fail. Naruto ignored it today however, because he was in a particularly good mood. And it was only a matter of time until his day got even better.

That time seemed to be now, as a Genome Soldier Naruto's age ran down the hall moaning in a frantic manner, bumping other members out of his way as he did so, "Get out of the way!" He said desperately, "Ugh, why was there milk in my coffee? I'm lactose intolerant!" He ran past Naruto holding his backside and went into the bathrooms, a smirk on Naruto's face going completely unseen as he did so.

After a short moment, echoes of the poor soldier moaning and sounds of flatulence came from the bathroom as a few other Genome Soldiers went inside, laughing at the previous one's misfortune, "Again Sasaki?" One of them said, "How about a courtesy flush here?" Naruto reached into one of his vest pockets and pulled out a detonator, placing his finger on the trigger in preparation.

The sounds of a handle jiggling and a toilet flushing came before a great explosion in the bathroom with sounds of water splashing everywhere. Sounds of disgust came from the Genome Soldiers as they ran outside, covered in nasty toilet water, "Where is the Uzumaki punk?" They asked as they looked around, no Naruto was in sight, just a cardboard box where he had been standing moments before, "Damn it, find that stupid kid!"

Running off to find Naruto they never noticed that there were eyeholes cut into the front of it, "Holy crap I can't believe that worked." Naruto whispered to himself from inside of the box, "And to think, I made fun of Konohamaru for using these things… but he and Master Miller were right." Naruto stood up, tossing the box off before walking into the bathroom to observe the damage that he had just done. As he walked in and splashed the water on the floor under his boots he blinked in surprise at the ruined line of stall doors, with only one standing albeit having suffered heavy damage, "That's the last time I substitute semtex for cherry bombs… I hope that guy is alive though…"

"Oh man…" Naruto heard as the final stall door fell to the ground to show the Genome Soldier that had initiated Naruto's prank walking out covered in the worst of it. He stumbled forward and leaned against a nearby sink, "This is so gross…" He muttered to himself, still holding his stomach as it gurgled angrily at him, "Ugh, what's with my luck?"

A frown crossed Naruto's face as he started to feel bad for what he had done. He could normally sense when the Genome Soldiers were looking down on him. This guy didn't give him that feeling at all, "Hey are you alright?" Naruto asked. He wasn't about to tell the guy that he was the one that blew the bathroom up if he didn't know. There was no reason to make a possible anomaly in the universal loathing from the Genome Soldiers have a reason to dislike him as well if he didn't already know he had done it.

"What just happened?" The soldier asked, shaking his head and making Naruto step back as toilet water flew everywhere, "Did I do that?" Even the man's balaclava was soaked. It _was_ pretty gross Naruto had to admit.

"No you didn't." Naruto said, still keeping his distance from the soldier who was a young man from what Naruto could tell of his voice. He actually seemed younger than a lot of the Genome Soldiers around Shadow Moses, "You don't seem to be like the rest of the others. You seem a little… off." If this guy really had the genes of Big Boss in him then he must have taken a direct injection of more of the recessive reject genes.

The young man stood up from leaning on the sink, "Oh, well I kind of never wound up getting any genome treatment. Needles kind of freak me out. It's kind of why I strictly work indoors. I never got the injections for the antifreeze glycopeptides either." He gave Naruto an eye-smile reminiscent of Kakashi and extended his hand, "I'm Johnny. Johnny Sasaki."

Naruto shied away from returning the gesture, "Nice to meet you, I'm Naruto Uzumaki… and I'll shake your hand after you shower and change." He gestured for Johnny to follow him, "Come on, I don't want to be here when the maintenance team shows up to deal with this."

Johnny looked around at himself and the utterly ruined bathroom and laughed nervously, "I can see your point."

XxX

Johnny turned out to have only been a soldier for less than a year, somehow winding up stationed there as one of the Next-Generation Special Forces, possibly from random selection. He was only a few months older than Naruto, but due to the fact that Naruto had far more experience than him and was almost pretty much a member of FOXHOUND he wound up calling Naruto 'Boss', the way that Ocelot called Liquid the same thing. This was something that Naruto could not break him out of, eventually forcing him to accept it.

Due to the lack of jobs that Johnny could do, he was usually stationed in the tank hangar, the closest building to the front side of the base. Usually stuck patrolling every floor in that particular building. The hangar itself and the basements below that had the holding cells/medical bay and the armory on their respective floors. Since Naruto usually had free roam of the base he would often find himself in this building, often attempting to fight the still life by joining Johnny on his patrol shifts.

His age, combined with his lack of experience, both in VR and reality, made Johnny something of an outcast among the Genome Soldiers. He was usually very nervous around them for multiple reasons and Naruto couldn't help but feel for the guy, eventually winding up with them becoming something like friends over the course of the month.

But in the meantime, boredom led Naruto to roaming the base more thoroughly in the places that he had been allowed to do so since he had the second highest level of clearance possible for personnel stationed there.

XxX

In the laboratory facility of the Shadow Moses base a young, lanky, meek looking scientist walked on the metal grates of the hallway floors of the place dressed in scientist garb. He had shoulder length brown hair and glasses that he took off to wipe clean while talking to himself, "What should I say? There's no way I've got anything in common with a woman like that." He let out a desperate sigh as he walked past the multiple side rooms set up as quarters for all of the scientists there to work on Metal Gear REX. "Maybe I should just be straightforward or something…" He muttered to himself before testing out a line, "Hey Wolf… I was just wondering if I could feed the wolf-dogs sometime."

"Okay." The man froze in place as he walked past an open doorway where Sniper Wolf was actually leaning, having heard the bulk of his ramblings and having chosen that moment to comment, "Why not? I don't see anything wrong with letting you do that. You've got to get out of this lab sometime I guess." She said in amusement, "You could have just asked me for something so trivial Dr. Emmerich."

The man's face turned red as he rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "P-Please, just call me Hal." He said, stammering nervously as he looked at Wolf, 'Gah, I must have sounded like a total idiot! Wolf's such a wonderful person not calling me on it though.'

The thing about it was, Wolf already knew that Hal Emmerich, the lead engineer for Metal Gear REX had a major crush on her. It hadn't taken long for her to see it after FOXHOUND's initial arrival in November of the last year. She didn't necessarily feel the same way however… but as FOXHOUND and the Genome Soldiers secretly solidified their hold over the island and prepared for their coming insurrection Liquid began restricting more of the scientists' freedoms.

Wolf acknowledged his request with a polite nod and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket that she handed to him, "If you're really going to feed the wolf-dogs then you're going to want to keep that with you. They know my scent so they won't avoid or attack you as long as you have that on you. Only myself and one other person here are able to get close enough to them to feed them." Granting the man a concession by being able to go outside to feed the wolf-dogs that roamed around the base seemed to be simple enough, though he would probably take it as something deeper.

"T-Thank you Wolf." Hal said as he shakily took the trinket from her and held it delicately, "I'll head out there tonight, right after we're done here. As soon as I can get an escort." He knew that the unit was cracking down and he was aware of what was going on. He had enough contact with the higher-ups that came down to the lab to subtly threaten them to know that they were more or less hostages at this point, but Wolf was different from the rest of them to him, "I'll take good care of it."

Smiling politely at the man, Wolf decided that she needed to get back to the Metal Gear REX hangar now that she had the updated data to get to Liquid. Before she could start down the hall however, a ding of the elevator attracted her attention. Both she and Hal looked down the hallway to see the doors to the elevator open and Naruto walk out, getting past the see-through motion detecting automatic sliding door, "You know you're not supposed to be here little probie." She said as he got out and started walking towards them, "Liquid's going to start turning the electrified floors back on when he finds out that you came down here."

Naruto grinned at her, "So? I'll just walk on the walls or the ceiling."

A look of mirth came to Wolf's eyes as she let out a small laugh, "I guess you could… so I guess I'll tell him to turn on the nerve gas too to keep you out." She couldn't help but be amused at his pout. He really didn't act like a soldier sometimes, but she knew how effective he truly was. He just never liked protocol, that was why someone like him would always do best working with fringe organizations. It was also why she liked him so much, not that he really knew that it was the reason.

"Why'd you give me a level 2 card key if you didn't want me to use it?" Naruto grumbled aloud, averting his eyes away from Wolf's cleavage as she walked closer to him, "All I want to do is see what REX looks like. I thought I could at least find some specs on it down here. Something to look at you know?" He was really getting bored with staying there, "And I find you down here, see you for the first time today, and all you can tell me to do is leave."

Wolf merely chuckled as she stopped in front of Naruto with her hands on her hips, "Aww, do you miss playing with me?"

Naruto smirked at her in response, "Since your 'playing' is usually shooting your rifle at me then no, I don't, not really. I'm kind of glad I'm too young for your standards to fall in love with, because then I wouldn't be any different from some of your tougher targets."

"You're technically the only target I've had that has ever gotten away." Wolf informed him, the same smile on her face that she had when they had first met, "I just never marked you as my prey because you live with us. And we're already very connected little probie, you and I. So you actually _are_ a target of mine. The toughest rundown I've ever come across because you survived. I've yet to get you."

Hearing that got Naruto to pale, "So you're going to kill me?" His only answer was Wolf's soft laughter that got him to cough and get his bravado back, "I mean, you can _try_ to kill me. Go ahead, bring it on just make sure you hit the real me and not a clone next time." He said before getting serious again, "So you guys really don't trust me enough?"

As far as things went, keeping Naruto out of the higher clearance areas made sure that he didn't realize what was going on with the complete control that the Genome Soldiers and FOXHOUND had here, it would also keep him from seeing the eventual hostile takeover of the base coming. Liquid would have made the labs level 3 clearance, but he figured that even Naruto would find that suspicious and that his automated defenses would be enough once they were turned on to keep the boy out. Also because the elevators to the labs also took people to and from the barracks located one floor above in the first basement of the building.

It was pure chance that Naruto had managed to find his way down there while the electric floors were turned off because they were meant to keep the scientists in and people like Naruto out, unable to see anything or talk to any of the scientists at all. He wasn't to find out what was going on there. They only told him what he needed to know to keep from growing suspicious. If Naruto actually got the idea in his head to put his nose to the ground and start snooping about Liquid believed that he would catch on fairly quickly that all was not as it seemed. He was far from stupid, he was just used to following orders without question.

"It's a responsibility Naruto." Wolf informed him, grabbing the young man of similar height by his whisker-marked cheek, "You have to show us that you're worthy of learning these things, of getting access to more of the base. Borderline insubordination isn't going to help that. Just be good and go back upstairs, that's an order. Liquid's going to turn the electricity back on soon after I radio him that I'm on the way back so hurry up." She said, giving him a kiss on the same cheek she had been holding onto.

"Wolf…" Naruto grumbled, face turning red. She treated him like a baby when they weren't being shot at, "Fine. I'll go back upstairs." He finally said, pulling a smile out of her as she walked past him and got on the elevator. She gave him a wink that got Naruto to growl at her in embarrassment as the doors to the elevator shut.

It wasn't hard for Hal to see through the byplay between Naruto and Sniper Wolf. The beautiful female sniper seemed to be closer to her younger blonde counterpart than anyone else currently at Shadow Moses. She wasn't nearly as cold as she usually seemed around others, she actually seemed very playful with him. It kind of made him a little jealous that he couldn't get the courage to try and speak to Wolf as brazenly as this kid seven years younger than him could. Maybe it would help his chances with Wolf down the line if he ever got the chance.

Naruto stopped looking at the elevator and over at the scientist still standing there looking at him, "Hey, you work on REX don't you? That's pretty cool." Naruto extended his hand to shake, "My name's Naruto Uzumaki."

"Dr. Hal Emmerich." Hal said, taking a hold of the younger man's hand and shaking it, "Wait, why don't you have a codename like the others? You're FOXHOUND aren't you?" He then saw Naruto's mood dim. He had clearly struck a nerve.

"I'm just a probational member…" Naruto said in a dejected manner with a sigh, "I've been on probation for a whole year. They won't give me a codename until they take me off and make me a full-fledged member." He then suddenly cheered back up as if he had never been down in the first place, "So can you show me something about REX or what? I'd love to see anything that you could show me."

Hal adjusted his glasses on his face, preparing to tell the young uninformed man what he could of his greatest creation until an announcement came over the intercom, _"The laboratory hallways in the nuclear warhead storage building are about to have a live current run through the floors as security measure in under three minutes. All active scientists make sure that you are safely inside of your place of work to avoid an accident. That is all."_

Hal frowned apologetically at the sad look on Naruto's face. Close to Sniper Wolf or not there was just something about this kid that he couldn't bring himself to dislike, "Sorry. Maybe I could tell you about it next time."

Naruto nodded and turned to head towards the elevator, "Sure thing. Thanks anyway though."

XxX

Outside in the forested space in the base that existed between buildings, Naruto sat outside in the snow with Vulcan Raven, the latter just meditating away while his smaller comrade sat next to him, just as shirtless as his elder operative, "Why am I out here with you Raven?" Naruto asked before sniffling hard, "Is this another hazing thing?" He could take the cold, it didn't mean that it was comfortable to him, especially without clothes. He was about to call upon some chakra to keep him more comfortable than he naturally would have been.

"I can't spend time with my subordinate?" Raven questioned Naruto, "Now is the chance for you to learn something new anyway. Meditation can get you in touch with your own mental energies, Mantis does it quite often as well as I, only he never comes out here to do so." A chuckle came from the large man, "You can strengthen your own abilities over your strange abilities by doing this."

Naruto knew about meditation, he was just really bad at it the last time he had tried it during his time as a ninja. But working with Sniper Wolf made him learn how to deal with not being able to move and being around Mantis so much taught him how to truly focus his mind, mostly to force the man out for his own protection. Why not try it again?

Naruto got himself in as comfortable a position as he could sitting in the snow, and grateful that the inclement weather that was scheduled to blast them wasn't until at least a week away. Naruto and Raven just sat there for hours, not moving, not speaking, just sitting and breathing evenly. The difference between them however was that Raven was focusing on feeling out the energies of the spirits around him, his focus was outward. Naruto on the other hand focused on the only thing he was used to feeling, the powers within himself, his chakra, something that Raven felt almost immediately as Naruto's body began to subconsciously produce it.

It surprised him because he knew that Naruto had it, he just didn't know that he himself would be able to feel it. It brought a smile to his face that he was able to do so after a year of working with Naruto, 'It was just as I thought. He does radiate power.'

Meanwhile Naruto didn't really know just how well he was doing at focusing his mind until he caught himself about to enter the sewer portion of his mind, prompting him to pull the plug on the whole meditative experience, standing up abruptly with a breathless gasp. Naruto didn't even bother sitting back down he just walked off holding his stomach to cover the seal that appeared whenever he channeled chakra.

"You don't need to hide your tribal markings little one." Naruto heard Raven say to him, stopping him in his tracks, "I've already seen it when you were drawing upon your impressive energies, across your navel, the spiral marking surrounded by the odd symbols."

Naruto turned with a hard look in his eyes, wondering if he was about to make something of it or ask a question that Naruto wasn't willing to answer, "And?" He asked with an edge in his voice.

Raven grinned at Naruto and stood up, pointing at the raven mark on his forehead, "You should not endeavor to hide the things that make you special. You seem to fear yourself. You don't have to tell me why you feel this way, it is your own business and it doesn't make you any more or less effective in the field. I'm just telling you this so that perhaps you can find peace within yourself."

Naruto held his stomach, the mark of his seal fading from view, "There's nothing peaceful about what I've got inside of me Raven." He said before turning to leave and head back inside.

XxX

(Supply Port – Shadow Moses Island – February 2005 – Naruto: Age 18)

"They finally give me an order and it's more grunt work…" Naruto mused to himself as he sat behind the wheel of a jeep, feet hoisted up on the dashboard as he waited for what was supposed to be a new arrival showing up today. All he was meant to do was to retrieve the new person and bring them to the barracks to get them settled in, "Finally." Naruto said to himself as the only boat that managed to show up in the port today disembarked, with one person walking away from it towards the base.

Hopping out of his car, Naruto yawned as he walked out to meet the new person. Hopefully this person wasn't a jerk like the rest of the Genome Soldiers. Those guys were getting edgier and edgier as the days carried on. He just started avoiding all of them except Johnny altogether but even he seemed out of it these days. He didn't even talk to Naruto, he hadn't for the last two days.

All of this was putting Naruto on edge as well. Hell by now the chief of DARPA Donald Anderson and the president of ArmsTech Kenneth Baker were on the island in preparation for the secret tests of their new weapons. He had only caught a small glimpse of them as a helicopter dropped them off. Anderson was an older stocky African-American man wearing a suit minus the jacket, while Baker was a very portly older Caucasian man with balding hair wearing a full suit and an overcoat. They had shown up earlier that day, but Naruto was more or less chased out early that morning before he could get halfway through his morning exercises with orders to show up at the docks and wait for this new recruit.

One damn soldier and he had been out there for several hours just twiddling his thumbs and waiting.

All by himself.

He really hated his job.

Which was the mindset he stepped to the new arrival with, a dull and listless tone of voice with his address of greeting, "Hello and welcome to Shadow Moses Island. My name is Naruto Uzumaki, FOXHOUND representative and probational member. If you'll follow me I'll take you to the main part of the base."

The person Naruto was talking to was a girl his age with wavy red hair that went down to her neck and blue eyes. She wore a green tanktop and brown fatigues with a belt that kept her supply pouches and radio. She also wore kneepads, forearm length fingerless gloves, and brown boots. A holster on her right thigh held a Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol and on her left shoulder she had a tattoo of the FOXHOUND logo.

"Wow you sure seem excited to be here." The girl said sarcastically. In response Naruto put a fake cheesy grin on his face and pointed at it before letting it fade, "_You're_ a member of FOXHOUND?" She said in a disbelieving voice as she looked the young man over.

Naruto turned abruptly on his heel and headed back towards the jeep, "Fine, feel free to walk it out all the way around base." He said in a perturbed voice, sick of even the new girl talking about how he didn't look like a real member. He pointed towards a massive set of closed blast doors set in the wall of a cliff in the distance, "Because you can't get in through the supply port there, and it's an eight mile run all the way around if you don't come back with me. Even if you could go through there all of the corridors and stuff would wind up taking you forever to get through."

The girl paled and hurried behind Naruto as he made his way back towards the jeep, "Wait why can't we just go through there?" She asked him, quickly catching up to him.

"I don't have the clearance." Naruto said plainly, used to not being able to go everywhere on the island by now, "Without the right card key you can't really get anywhere around here." With that in mind he fished through his pockets and handed her a brand new level 1 card key, "That'll get you everywhere you'll need to go for now. If you have any questions then ask me, I'm the nicest person you're going to find around here to do it for you. Remember my frequency, it's 141.92."

The girl watched Naruto jump clear over the jeep and land in the driver's seat. Stunned by such agility she almost forgot to ask her question, "I don't see a radio on you. Isn't everyone supposed to carry one with them?"

Naruto pointed at his left ear as he started the jeep waiting for the new girl to get into the vehicle, "I got bored sitting up here for months doing nothing so I volunteered to test out some new FOXHOUND equipment. It's like a surgically implanted radio in my ear. This way no one can eavesdrop on me and I can freak people out by making them think I'm talking to myself." He let out a small laugh thinking about it, "So I pretty much always have my radio on me 24/7. I don't think anyone in FOXHOUND even knows that I have it. It's supposed to be called a Codec." He began to pull off and begin driving them back to base when he remembered something, "Oh, I'm sorry. I never got your name rookie-girl."

That little name from Naruto got a glare from said 'rookie-girl', "My name is Meryl Silverburgh…" She then remembered that Naruto was a member of FOXHOUND and quickly recomposed herself, "Um… sir."

"No sir, I'm on probation." Naruto said as he navigated the snowy backroads of Shadow Moses, "I don't have any authority over anyone around here. But none of the Genome Soldiers can tell me what to do either. I only take my orders from FOXHOUND members."

Meryl nodded and sat in silence for a moment, sneaking glances at the boy that couldn't have been much older than her if he even was in the first place. How did a person like this wind up in FOXHOUND at that age, "So how'd a 'rookie' the same age as me end up in FOXHOUND?" She asked him trying to make conversation.

"I'm not a rookie." Naruto said with a smile on his face, "I've been doing this for four years. Technically longer." He saw the stunned look on her face and that got a laugh out of him, "That's what most people look like when I tell them. You're looking at a child soldier."

"Wow you must be some kind of prodigy." Meryl said in amazement, "I've wanted to be a member of FOXHOUND my whole life. My uncle was a member for the longest time, back in its heyday. He worked with Solid Snake, the hero that defeated Big Boss himself."

"Small world." Naruto commented with a grin, "I was trained by Master Miller, he was Solid Snake's mentor in FOXHOUND and was his support team when he beat Big Boss. He worked the hell out of me but if it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't be here." 'No, I definitely wouldn't be here, that's for sure. I owe him and Kitty everything.' He thought fondly to himself, "So just stick with me, I'll take care of you around here."

A scoff came from Meryl, "And why do you just assume I need someone to take care of me? Because I'm a girl?"

"No…" Naruto replied with a deadpan look on his face, "Because the Genome Soldiers are jerks and if you're not one of them they won't really help you. You don't look like you inject yourself full of soldier genes so I don't think they'll help you too much. Everybody needs help. I try and help another rookie around here named Johnny too." He gave her a slight glare, "Don't you try and pull that sexist crap on me, I work with Sniper Wolf, are you kidding me?"

Well upsetting someone that was trying to be nice to her wasn't exactly how Meryl wanted to start her working relationship with someone that would probably be there for quite some time that actually had experience and was offering to help, "Sorry."

Naruto got over it quickly enough, "It's alright." Naruto said as they wound up weaving through the base near the pair of 28 story communication towers on the way to the nuclear storage building where the barracks sat in the 1st level basement, "Don't worry about the comm. towers over there, you're probably not going to be getting in there anytime soon. Just worry about getting the lay of the base between the storage facility and the heliport out front, that's where you're going to probably be most of the time anyway." And so he launched into an explanatory spiel on things that she needed to know about the base in his mind.

XxX

(Barracks – Nuclear Warhead Storage Building – Shadow Moses Island – Four Hours Later)

Naruto dropped Meryl off outside of the building and went in to find his own room, one of the only perks he had being connected with FOXHOUND. All he had done in the meantime had been to sleep and check his weapons. He had gone to the armory to grab some extra ammunition beforehand seeing as how he had nothing but time these days.

As he casually lay in his bed in his small room perusing over his guns and magazines with a hot bowl of instant ramen at his side, a beeping noise went off in Naruto's head. Naruto touched his ear so that he could answer his Codec call, "Yes, Naruto here." He said, answering without worrying about the frequency.

"_Naruto. Good to hear from you, I haven't seen you in a few days."_ Naruto held back a sigh as he heard Liquid's British accent over the line, _"Listen, I have something important to talk to you about. Are you willing to listen to me?"_

This was weird. Liquid never _asked_ Naruto to do anything, it was always an order. Something didn't feel right, "Of course I'm willing to listen Liquid. Why wouldn't I?" No matter what asinine order Liquid had given him before this Naruto had always obeyed. How would this be any different? Naruto sat up at attention on his bed, "Now what's going on, are we under attack?" He felt his pulse rise at the simple thought of actually getting to fight and prove himself again.

"_In a manner of speaking."_ Liquid said, and Naruto jumped out of bed and started gathering all of his gear and equipment; his goggles, SOCOM pistols, his arm covers with the throwing knives, his supply pouches, his MP5K, everything he had, _"Are you listening to me Naruto? I need you to listen closely. Stop what you're doing and just listen."_

"You've got it." Naruto said as he pulled his ballistic vest on, still keeping his hand to his ear to talk and listen, "What's the problem?"

"_If you follow my next order successfully then I'll accept you as a full-fledged member of FOXHOUND."_ Liquid said in a way that showed that he knew that would get all of Naruto's undivided attention, _"When I said the base is under attack I meant it. We're the ones who have taken over the base."_ The finality of how he said that shocked Naruto into stumbling backwards and sitting on the bed, _"We've launched our insurrection against those that only use us and throw us away as if we were expendable. FOXHOUND and the Next-Generation Special Forces… we've rebelled against the United States Government."_

Naruto could only stare out into space with wide eyes as he listened to what he was being told, "What?"

"_We've been taking control of the island and the base for months now from below the surface. The scientists here are our hostages as are the DARPA Chief and the ArmsTech President as of today. We've taken Metal Gear REX, and the new stealth nuclear warhead. Our demands are the body of Big Boss that the Pentagon has in their possession. If they fail to meet out demands then we will launch a nuclear strike."_

"Why are you just now telling me this?" Naruto asked, feeling his hands shaking at the mere thought of what was occurring around him, "Why didn't you tell me this before? I want to know why you're just now getting to this!"

"_If you had said no to joining us prior to everything being set then there would have been a chance of our plans being threatened. Now it is too late for you to do anything really. You're inside of _our _stronghold, surrounded by _our _men. If you don't join us now then we can capture you just like the new recruit that was sent here. She was a liability."_

Naruto put his hand in his mouth to keep from yelling, cursing, berating Liquid for doing something so stupid. He bit down on his hand hard enough to draw blood, "You really think that little of me that you think that taking me alive is possible?" Naruto finally said in a bitter voice, "Are you serious about this? This is happening right now?"

"_It's already happened."_ Liquid said over the radio, _"I have Ocelot interrogating the DARPA Chief Donald Anderson as we speak for the codes to activate REX. There's no stopping anything now. I've told you all you need to know about the situation, now make your choice. I don't have the time to debate with a brat."_

Naruto sat there for the longest time just saying nothing as silence reigned over his room. Even now he could hear the heavy footsteps of the booted Genome Soldiers outside in the halls, more than a few probably preparing to take him by force if it came to it. The last thing Naruto had yet to place on his person was the blue headband with his old village's symbol on it, something that he stared at intensely.

Having finally made his choice, Naruto stood up off of his bed and tied the headband tightly around his head. Naruto grabbed his tape and started wrapping both of his hands up before putting two fingers to his ear and speaking, "You said that you want me to choose, but you're not giving me a choice at all Liquid. It's either take part in something I don't want to do and become a criminal or die. Either way I won't ever see my loved ones again… and I can't just let you launch a nuclear weapon with me here just watching." He then picked up his bowl of ramen and drank down the broth before licking his lips and continuing to speak, "Well I would say that it was a pleasure working with you, but I hated your guts the entire time."

"_Well you can't say I didn't offer you a choice. But you aren't getting off that easily. You belong to FOXHOUND."_ Liquid then abruptly cut his transmission.

Naruto scoffed and began to move for the door when he heard strange eerie music begin to play. The only time he had ever heard any music on the base was from Psycho Mantis' record player.

Fuck.

'Get out of my head Mantis…' Naruto told him in thought with no joking whatsoever, 'I'm not joining you, I'm going home. Do whatever the hell you want. This isn't my country, I don't really care about it.'

"_Didn't you listen to Liquid?"_ Mantis said in a maniacally amused voice, _"You belong to FOXHOUND. If you won't join us then I'll just make you join us!"_

Naruto felt his movements become restricted and his will over his own body fade slowly, 'Mantis get the fuck out right now! I swear I'll make you wish you never tried this, you've got no idea what you're doing!'

"_What a joke! I am Psycho Mantis brat! I'm the most powerful psychic in the entire world! And I've been training just for you... You won't will me out this time, I'll make you bring out that darkness of yours! You can't keep me from it!"_

Continuing to struggle with his body, Mantis forced Naruto to pull his SOCOM pistol out, beginning a struggle to get Naruto to aim it at his own head, 'You idiot…' Naruto thought as he fought back as hard as he could against the control of Mantis, 'I wasn't trying to keep you away from it, I was trying to keep it away from you. But if you really want it you've got it.' Naruto let his control fade, and as his gun started moving towards his head without opposition his eyes turned red, bringing to gun to a stop in mid-air.

Inside of his own head and out loud as well from further inside of the barracks, Naruto heard a horrible scream of terror from Psycho Mantis as his control over the young blonde's body dropped. Naruto took this moment to slide under his bed just as his door slid open. Naruto arched his back up hard and flipped the bed over to block his body from the several Genome Soldiers trying to breach the doorway.

Naruto quickly pushed the door hard and slammed it into the Genome Soldiers trying to enter, using it to block the doorway altogether. Naruto leaned his body against the bed and pulled out a flash grenade that he threw over the opening outside of his room. Once it exploded, Naruto quickly moved the bed and exited the room to take advantage of the disorientation provided by his flash grenade. Naruto quickly formed five clones that helped the original in his efforts to swiftly beat the Genome Soldiers into unconsciousness, taking out three months of aggression and pent up boredom on their bodies with his furious assault that left the entire squad lying.

With the Genome Soldiers sent after him beaten, Naruto moved quickly to the elevator trying to avoid the soldiers that were scampering about. He used it to get up to the first floor of the nuclear warhead storage facility. Naruto felt more confident than ever as the doors to the elevator opened placing Naruto on a balcony with soldiers closing in on both sides. He could get out of there in one piece, but he couldn't use his guns in that room due to the risk of igniting any leaking radioactive material.

That was okay, that was what all of the throwing knives, shuriken, and kunai were for.

A quick movement of hands led to Naruto depositing a throwing knife directly in the chest of a Genome Soldier dressed to handle the radioactive leaks. A burst of gunfire from a FAMAS wielded by another soldier wound up with Naruto jumping over the railing and off of the balcony to the ground where he ran for cover by a supply truck that was nearby on the ground floor. Naruto saw a door leading to the outside snowfield that he had never been allowed access to. It was too thick and sturdy for him to get through in a destructive manner and he didn't know how to open it.

'If I can get outside then I can make a run for it, hide for a bit and think of a plan.' Naruto thought to himself as he formed a Rasengan in his right hand. He didn't have time to find a proper way through that door, he had to get outside some other way. Around the side of the truck that Naruto was hiding against he could tell that the Genome Soldiers were preparing to surround him from both sides, not that he would give them the opportunity.

Naruto jumped onto the top of the truck and ran towards the back of it, jumping off of it directly at a Genome Soldier that had stayed back from the attempt to surround him to observe the plan play out from afar. He fired at the airborne Naruto but missed and wound up being hit with a Rasengan for his efforts to stop the young man.

The force of the jutsu sent the man flying uncontrollably, forcing his body to smack against one of the nuclear warhead missiles violently, not even budging the structure holding them whatsoever. Naruto took this opportunity to take the clear path and slide under the massive vertically shutting door that was ajar enough for Naruto to slide through the opening provided, letting him exit the building through the only door available to him that led to a canyon that sat between the nuclear warhead storage facility and the tank hangar.

For most normal people this would be a narrow path of death, locking someone in between pursuing forces from one building and driving them towards another in a trap.

Naruto was not most people.

This was evidenced by him taking a hard left the second he left the nuclear warhead storage facility, running towards the canyon wall which he then attached himself to with his feet and chakra. This allowed him to run up the side, dodging the erratic gunfire of the Genome Soldiers that couldn't track his speed, having never dealt with anyone on his level before.

Making it to the top of the canyon, Naruto turned and flipped off the Genome Soldiers below that were trying to figure where he would go from there, still firing at him trying to take him down as he taunted them, "How are those genes from Big Boss working for you? I'm pretty sure he would have been able to hit me at least once you fucking wannabes!" He yelled down with nothing but venom in his voice.

With his peace spoken, Naruto turned to run on the top of the canyon cliffs when he heard a shot ring out. As was his natural reflex when he heard any kind of sniper shot he hit the ground, eating a face full of snow, but avoiding the bullet meant for him. Naruto rolled over as from the top of the canyon cliffs there was only one place where anyone could be shooting at him from, the 26 story communication towers. There was also only one person that he knew that actually had the chops to shoot him from that far away in the blizzard that was beginning to kick up.

He didn't move an inch, only looking towards the very top of the towers where he knew Sniper Wolf had him right in her sights. All he did was stare. He couldn't see her but he knew she was looking right at him, right in his eyes even though she should have been aiming right between them. As he just lay on the frigid ground he didn't make a single move until the ringing in his ear went off to let him know he was being contacted, getting him to place his two fingers by his ear, "Hello Wolf." He said in a business-like tone.

And he was not disappointed in his assumption once he heard the calm, lovely accent of Sniper Wolf on the other end, _"You always could seem to feel when I was watching you little probie. Though I guess that you aren't really our probie anymore after this. I guess the proper thing to call you now would be 'target'."_ Naruto bared his teeth at hearing that but kept his temper in check, _"You knew that this would happen."_

"So why haven't you shot me yet?" Naruto asked her, "I know you. You're looking right at me… you could probably tell what I'm saying with your radio off just from reading my lips. I should be dead right now."

"_You don't have a rifle with you."_ It wasn't a question, it was a statement. They both knew that Naruto only carried certain things on his person, a sniper rifle was not one of those things unless he was told to do so beforehand, _"How fair would it be for my finest target to go out like this, with no fighting chance whatsoever? I want to see your fire, your will to live. I want to see the spirit you showed me in Iraq. It was what made me spare your life back then. I was supposed to kill you on that mission, while you were pinned down in the village. I was supposed to put one shot right through your heart. It was never even supposed to come to this."_

"The heart? Not the head?" Naruto asked her.

A small laugh came from over the line, _"I remember you telling me once upon a time that you despised the feeling of being shot in the head, you rather preferred being hit in the chest."_ That got even Naruto to crack a smile, _"But that changed when you stumbled upon those civilians and began to protect them as you moved through the village. If you had died they would have all been massacred. I would not be responsible for the deaths of innocents."_

Naruto growled at that statement from Wolf, "Then why are you doing this Wolf? Liquid plans on launching a nuke. People that don't have anything to do with us are going to die."

"…_That is different. This is for Saladin."_ Naruto put a frown on his face. Whenever Wolf spoke of Big Boss to Naruto, the man that had taken her from the battlefields of Iraq to the United States and saw the true potential she had for combat, she always referred to him as Saladin, _"I want my revenge on the world for what they drove him to do. For just attempting his dream of creating a place where soldiers like us would not be pawns, where we would always have a place in the world be it on the battlefield or in society itself they demonized him, labeled him a terrorist and a monster, just for a dream. A place where no country could control our actions. I want revenge for taking that dream and Saladin himself away."_

"Wolf…" Naruto said sadly, clinched fists full of snow. If he had to be honest with himself it sounded… it sounded like Konoha to him. The stories of Big Boss's Outer Heaven no matter how anyone tried to spin it sounded a lot like shinobi hidden villages to him. He probably would have loved that, but even so… "You don't have to do this for that to be real." He tried to reason with her.

"_Still such a child…"_ He could almost see her shaking her head as she said those words to him, _"If you haven't learned by now Naruto you will soon. Nothing in this world is as simple as it sounds in theory. There are those in control that would do anything to stay there. They would do anything to make sure that they control everything, especially those like us that fight, using us like tools. You are as well, even if you don't see it. Do you not remember your capture by unseen forces?"_

Naruto's eyes widened, "I never told any of you about that…"

"_Liquid and Ocelot watched as you were taken. Plucked right from the battlefield. Defenseless, helpless. All so that they could harness your skills, your powers. So that you were theirs to control. We knew. We always knew."_

Naruto's mind flashed back. He had pieced together stitches of his memory from the time he had been captured, times where he would momentarily regain consciousness. The horrible pain, the bright lights, the cold voice recording verbal findings for posterity. He had to grab his own hand to stop from shaking, "I'm sorry Wolf. I can't be a part of this." Naruto said shaking his head knowing that she could see it, "I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I do know right and I know wrong. I do know that sometimes things are never that black and white, but I know what things look like to me. There's a better way than this, I know there is. I can't let you do this. Don't make me stop you because I will, don't make me hurt you because I can."

"_Then I guess we have no choice. I'm sorry Naruto."_

"Don't be sorry yet." Naruto replied as he stood back up and pointed over to the farthest cliff that he could see, the only place he could go that was out of Wolf's sights was over the edge of that cliff, "That's where I'm going. It's the only place to go. I can't fight you back. There's no cover up here to hide, and I can't drop back down into the canyon because the Genome Soldiers are still there."

Through her scope Wolf could see Naruto pull his facemask over his mouth and nose and put his goggles down over his eyes, probably so that she wouldn't be able to see any of his facial expressions, _"That cliff is half a mile away from your location, do you really think you can make it that far?"_ Sniper Wolf said in a tone of disbelief.

"I never give up Wolf." Naruto replied, reaching into one of his supply pouches, "Let's play just one more game okay? Just you and me. This was one that Ocelot taught me how to do… only we're not going to play with a revolver… we're going to play with your rifle and my life." With that Naruto cut the connection and dropped a smoke bomb on the ground, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

XxX

Sniper Wolf watched through her scope as six different Narutos rushed from the smoke towards the cliff that would mark his safety. Five fakes and only one real Naruto. Wolf only had five shots to a magazine. At the most she could only take out five before having to reload and re-aim, giving the original a chance to get away if she guessed wrong, "Human Russian Roulette… and I thought you didn't want to play anymore games with me." She spoke softly to herself almost happily as she started to take aim, "I'll find you my prey. You will be mine. I promised you that a long time ago."

Despite the complete lack of cover the canyon top provided, Naruto and his clones did well with what they had. Utilizing zig-zag tactics to try and throw her off, dropping more smoke bombs and then using them to mix up their ranks randomly again, he was making it interesting.

Wolf fired her first shot and caught one Naruto directly in the upper back, dispelling it. As she rolled her next round into the chamber she saw all of the Naruto copies remaining stumble somewhat but still keep going full speed nonetheless, showing that they all felt the shot that had taken the first one out.

One unlucky Naruto showed that he felt the effects too much however, falling to the ground after his stumble, and Wolf, never one to miss an opening, fired a shot at the downed Naruto that went right through its head. This one turned to smoke as well, showing that the real Naruto was still alive.

All of the Narutos held their heads in pain, but kept running and trying to escape, never letting up for a second.

Wolf slid another bullet into the chamber with three shots remaining, "And then there were four…" She then fired and put another Naruto to sleep in its own smoke, "…Make that three." With two of her own shots now remaining.

She narrowed her eyes and focused as Naruto seemed to be getting closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. He really did have the devil's luck to have lasted that long in their little 'game'. But she would not simply let him escape so easily.

Taking aim at another of the dwindling numbers of Naruto, she fired with cold, efficient accuracy, right through the back and into the heart, however this too resulted in a clone being destroyed, 'He made it all the way to the end.' She thought to herself as she ejected another shell casing and chambered her last shot. Even if it hadn't been the final bullet in the magazine it was still the last one she had time to attempt before he escaped. By now she had zeroed in on her final target. She was able to locate subtle differences between all of the clones she had killed as well as the one remaining and compared them to the original one still out there.

As far as things went, her next shot would hit her intended target. Only divine intervention would save the mark of her final bullet now, "Goodbye Naruto." She said to herself, wishing she could hear him respond at the moment, "You were your own man the entire time you were with us." She said before firing her final bullet with a resounding crack from her rifle. She knew that she had struck true the moment she fired the shot, she was able to see the body jerk the second she pulled the trigger. Not even bothering with looking to see the results, she stood up and headed back inside before the blizzard grew to be even worse.

There wasn't any time to dwell on the past, there was still work that needed to be done.

XxX

(Twin Lakes, Alaska – Twelve Hours Later)

At his lakeside home, a man with short brown hair found himself being escorted from his home by a group of armed soldiers. The irritable scowl on his face could be attributed to the sudden sacking of his house, the fact that they didn't identify themselves and made it seem as though his capture was their objective, and the fact that they strip searched him and took all of his weapons from him. That last one was possibly the biggest reason he was in a foul mood at the moment.

As he climbed into the military transport vehicle that had taken the soldiers to his home in the first place, the man could only say one thing out loud in the rather gruff voice of his, "Colonel Campbell better have a damn good reason for sending you all to come and find me like this."

One of the soldiers turned towards him when he said this, "He knows that you retired." The truck pulled off as it began to take them towards the intended destination, "But he also felt that the man that took down Big Boss was the only one that could help with what's going on right now. You were the only person the Colonel could turn to Solid Snake."

Said man just grunted and rode in silence. He couldn't change that he was already there. At least he was heading to Colonel Campbell himself, this way he could get all the answers he needed right from the man. But he didn't have a very good feeling about any of this, because if it was thought that calling him out of retirement was the right course of action.

The reason he was needed probably wasn't for anything good.

* * *

><p><strong>Shadow Moses Incident is underway. Yeah, so that's how that works out for this chapter. Now it being 8 a.m. I believe that I will go for a run. Why did I write that? Because I felt like saying it, it needed to be stated. But anyway, hope you enjoyed it, and like always there will be more coming. Count on it.<strong>

**Questions that I might be able to answer of a non spoiler-related manner? I'll see what I can do later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	7. With a Vengeance

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I don't see why there aren't more bipedal tanks in the world. I mean we spend enough money on all of that other shit don't we? Speaking of which why don't we invest in more research on superpowers? I want some of that shit. I know we can do it somehow, there has to be a way. Someone smart with some vision should get right on that.

And I don't mean super-strength or speed or anything else involving muscles either… they have a way to help you get that… it's called steroids.

**Chapter 7: With a Vengeance**

* * *

><p>(Mission Briefing)<p>

Col. Campbell: "The nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses Island and Alaska's Fox Archipelago was attacked and captured by Next-Generation Special Forces being led by members of FOXHOUND. They're demanding that the government turn over the remains of Big Boss and they say that if their demands aren't met within 24 hours they'll launch a nuclear weapon."

"You'll have two mission objectives. First you're to rescue DARPA Chief Donald Anderson and the ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker. Both are being held as hostages. Secondly you're to investigate whether or not the terrorists have the ability to make a nuclear strike and stop them if they do."

Solid Snake: "What's the insertion method?"

Col. Campbell: "We'll approach the nuclear disposal facility by sub."

Solid Snake: "And?" The gruff voice asked in response, annoyed. It couldn't have been that blatant a method, he would have been discovered in seven seconds if it had been like that.

Col. Campbell: "We'll launch a one-man SDV (Swimmer Delivery Vehicle). After it gets as close as it can, dispose of it. From there on you'll have to swim. Your enemies are the high-tech special unit FOXHOUND. Your old unit… and one I was a commander of."

Solid Snake: "So they're still around."

Col. Campbell: "There are six members of FOXHOUND involved in this terrorist activity. Psycho Mantis, with his powerful psychic abilities. Sniper Wolf, a beautiful and deadly sharpshooter. Decoy Octopus, master of disguise. Vulcan Raven, a giant of a man and shaman. Revolver Ocelot, a specialist in interrogation and a formidable gunfighter. They're all led by FOXHOUND field commander Liquid Snake; the man with the same codename as you."

Solid Snake: "…"

Col. Campbell: "I'll instruct you by Codec after you reach your infiltration point."

Solid Snake: "Anyone going with me?"

Col. Campbell: "As usual this is a one-man solo sneaking mission. Weapons and equipment OSP (procured on-site). This is a top secret black-op, don't expect any official support.

XxX

A figure in a diving suit swam through a cavern, eventually finding its way to the docks that were set up to bring cargo up to the main part of the base. As they got out of the water and quickly hid themselves, getting rid of their diving gear as fast as possible as well an echo could be heard from where they were.

"He'll be through here, I know it." Liquid said, standing by a cargo elevator that led up as he had several Genome Soldiers patrolling the cargo hold cavern, "I'm going to go swat down some bothersome flies." He said as he hit the button to the elevator and headed up to the actual base itself.

Back with the diver that had infiltrated the facility, it turned out to be Solid Snake in a diving mask and a black sneaking suit, designed to provide him protection from damage and the elements. Still ducking behind loading equipment, keeping out of sight of the Genome Soldier patrol, he touched his hand to his ear and activated his Codec, "Colonel… I'm in."

"_Good Snake. You can now begin your infiltration of the Shadow Moses Nuclear Weapon Disposal Facility."_

"Understood." Snake said to the man keeping tabs of his actions from a submarine in the Bering Sea, "First thing's first. I need to find and rescue the DARPA Chief." He finished as he began to sneak around the area, keeping behind crates and checking his corners to ensure that he wasn't spotted. He had absolutely no weapons on him yet. He would have to find them as he moved through the base.

But he was used to working like this.

XxX

(Shadow Moses Island – Canyon Farside Crevice)

Naruto woke up covered in snow with a tongue licking his masked, goggled face spiritedly, "Ugh." Pulling both of those things down, he found himself lying down surrounded by wolf-dogs, staring at him and panting happily, "Oh yeah… animals totally love me." He muttered to himself as he started moving slowly after taking such a nasty fall. Looking around, he found himself in a fissure that he fell down after his rush towards the cliff during his escape attempt from Sniper Wolf.

By now night had fallen, telling the young blonde that he had been there for quite some time as it was very cloudy but still light out when he had cut loose from the base. The snowflakes were falling quite furiously from the sky as Naruto dislodged himself from the snowdrift he had found himself in. Pulling himself out and sitting on the ground he found himself surrounded by the wolf-dogs that had been hanging out while he had been unconscious. Seeing the animals made Naruto think back to the last thing he remembered doing. He immediately started trying to find a wound from a sniper bullet, since he felt every shot that Wolf hit a clone with he was never sure if she had actually shot him or not until he realized that he had still been running, from that point he just kept plugging along waiting to be picked off.

Apparently it never happened.

When he found no wound on his person he lay back in the snow and sighed in relief. The pain from the phantom injuries had passed while he had been unconscious. His clones had been obliterated but better them than him in this case. As he lay down the wolf-dogs bounded over to him yapping and barking, eliciting a smile from Naruto, "Hey guys… Sorry I can't feed you. I've got to go stop some bad stuff from happening." He said as he rubbed a few of them on their heads.

He stood up and wiped the snow off of his person, making sure that he still had all of his equipment with him. He could see a crack that he could fit his body through, probably how the dogs found him, that he squeezed himself through to begin getting his bearings and getting himself together, 'Okay, so I'm all alone in the middle of Shadow Moses Island surrounded by Genome Soldiers and my FOXHOUND partners that think I'm dead.'

They had to think he was dead. If they thought he had escaped then they would have found him, all they would have had to do was trace his steps to the edge of the cliff he had been running on, as out of the way as that was for them.

'So that means that I might have the drop on them…' Naruto thought to himself as he turned around to the wolf-dogs, "You guys can't follow me. Most of the Genome Soldiers don't like you guys anyway." They whined as if they understood him, letting him walk away from them as he started to get his location, 'Damn. I ran away towards the edge of the island. I'm near the power station. This is right on the mobile patrol route, I can't stay here.'

At that moment, prompted by noise in the winter night over the howling winds, Naruto looked up and out at a distance where he could see two fighter jets flying. Were they stupid? Liquid had the damn country held under nuclear hostage and they were sending in fighter jets to do whatever it was they were there to do? That wouldn't do anything but piss him off.

There was no one to call. The only frequencies he knew were those of FOXHOUND members or Genome Soldiers. That would do him no good. He was stuck on the island, there was nowhere to go for help, even if he could walk his ass back across the water to the mainland then what? There was no one to go to. He had to do this himself, it was his only choice.

With this in mind, Naruto started running along the roadside he was near, willing to use the route until it became prudent to use less direct routes to move about. The first thing he had to do was see if he could free Meryl. Any help would be good enough for him in this case, and that was a start if nothing else.

XxX

(Heliport)

Snake hid himself after getting off of the cargo elevator as the heliport outside of the tank hangar of the base was very well guarded with a dozen soldiers stationed about. Touching his ear to access his Codec again, Snake began to communicate with his support, "A Hind D?" He wondered aloud as he saw the helicopter prepared to take off, "What's a Russian gunship doing here?"

"_I have no idea."_ Campbell replied, _"But it looks like our diversion got their attention with the fighter jets. Now's your best chance to sneak into the base unnoticed."_ The Hind D lifted off of the ground with Liquid manning it all by himself, heading off to deal with the jets that were pestering them, _"There are only 18 hours left until their deadline, you've got to move! Remember that you've got Naomi and Mei Ling for support as well if you have any question. So don't hesitate to call either me or them Snake. Remember that other than a pair of binoculars you've got nothing. Arm yourself with whatever you can find."_

"Oh I remember alright." Snake said bitterly, remembering how he was pulled from his peaceful home, "First I'm strip searched by Doctor Naomi, then I get all of my weapons taken away. Imagine yourself put into that situation."

A formal sounding female voice cut into the conversation in Campbell's place, _"Well if you make it back in one piece maybe I'll let you do a strip search on me."_ She said in a teasing manner.

Snake fought back a lecherous smirk at that, "I'll hold you to that doctor. And sorry to disappoint you but I did manage to smuggle out my smokes." He said, fishing a pack of cigarettes from his supply pouch.

"_How on earth did you manage to do that?"_ Naomi asked him, honestly curious.

"In my stomach." Snake replied as if it had been obvious, "Your little series of shots to get me ready for this mission suppressed my stomach acids so thanks."

"…_That's disgusting."_

"It is what it is." Snake said, not really caring too much about her opinion on it, "Alright, I'm heading in now." He said as he started sneaking around the helicopter platform of the heliport. He could see that the soldiers stationed outside were on edge as he slipped past them, a fight would serve him absolutely no purpose as long as he had no weapon on his person. He wouldn't be able to win.

Snake ducked behind a wall leading to the tank hangar as two Genome Soldiers walked past him, not noticing his presence due to the shadow of the night and the wall keeping him concealed. He heard the two men talk as they moved past him, "Do you believe that little bastard Uzumaki thinking he had a chance of getting away? He thought he had gotten out when he escaped the canyon… the freak."

"Yeah." The second man replied, "I heard Sniper Wolf put him out of his misery though. You could hear the shots all the way from where we were. Good riddance, that brat was a waste of space. FOXHOUND material my ass. He should have been shining boots."

Snake waited for them to get a distance away as he activated his Codec, "Colonel, I thought you said there were only six members of FOXHOUND. Why were they talking about another one? Who is Uzumaki?"

"_Uzumaki…"_ Campbell said as if he were testing the name, feeling he had heard it somewhere before, _"That name is familiar for some reason but I can't recall. I wouldn't worry about it though, they said that he had been killed. It's not your problem Snake."_

"Alright Colonel." Snake said as he stopped the transmission, moving against the wall until he found a supply truck that had just parked itself near the front doors of the tank hangar, however the hangar doors were shut tightly, he had to find another way in. Hopping in the back to get himself out of the cold for a moment to get his bearings on the situation and the setting around him. He searched through the back of the truck to find that it was more military hardware, probably meant to go into the armory in the nearby building, 'Fantastic.' Snake thought to himself as he found himself looking at an open crate of SOCOM pistols, 'I'm finally armed.' He thought, though he still needed to find himself some ammo.

With a gun finally found for his own protection, Snake hopped out of the back of the truck once the coast was clear and made his way towards the wall next to the tank hangar doors, slipping his way to an open vent that he saw during his time in the truck.

He ducked down at the open vent along the ground to slip himself into it, crawling on his belly. Snake allowed himself a small smile of triumph as he managed to get into the stronghold without any issue, 'So far so good.' He thought to himself as he moved through the vent carefully so as not to make any noises until he received a call on his Codec once more. It was starting to irk him. Couldn't he get some traction on his mission before people started asking him things? "Yes?" He asked, hiding his perturbed attitude.

"_There's another member of your support team that I haven't introduced yet."_ Campbell informed him, _"I'd like to introduce FOXHOUND's former drill sergeant, the man who helped train you one upon a time. Master Miller's joining us from his home in the Alaskan interior just to help you."_

"_Hello Snake."_ The previously introduced man greeted Snake from his frequency, _"I may not be there with you, but I do have experience surviving in some of Alaska's harsher conditions. I can give you advice on how to best handle certain situations that you might find yourself in to help you through this."_

"Thanks Master." Snake said grateful to have his old instructor, another friendly personality from his past with him on the mission, "There's no one I'd rather have with me in a foxhole than you."

XxX

(With Naruto – Outside the Tank Hangar)

Naruto managed to catch a supply truck headed down the path with a risky little tactic; laying down in the middle of the snow covered road as it passed over him and grabbing a hold of the undercarriage as it passed over him. He had just dodged bullets from the best sniper he had ever met in his life, a truck didn't scare him.

The truck wound up taking him right outside of the tank hangar where he sat waiting for a while under the vehicle as he waited out the patrol patterns of the men around him. He had even seen Liquid take off in the Hind D to engage the jets that had been hanging around the area, 'Those poor bastards… Liquid's going to shoot them right down. He's that damn good at using the Hind.'

Eventually he detached himself and crawled out from underneath the truck, snapping his head towards the security camera set over the sealed hangar doors that was turning his way. Naruto quickly flipped throwing knife from his supply sleeve to stick itself in the joint of the camera arm, jamming it and keeping it from turning. Now he only had the guards to deal with, and no Genome Soldier had the chops to locate a motivated Naruto. The parts of the base that Naruto had access to prior to the insurrection he had knowledge of like the back of his hand out of sheer boredom.

Naruto dodged the patrol squad and made his way to the tower near the tank hangar that he scaled swiftly, taking a low-key perch at the top on an automatic searchlight, using the powerful light as a blind to keep others from seeing him up there. Anyone that bothered looking up there would only be blinded and unable to see anything behind the actual light. Naruto jumped from the top of the light to the snowy roof of the tank hangar and rushed towards a series of air ducts sticking up.

The boy walked towards them, counting out the second one from the left, 'First one leads to the first floor, second one leads to the first basement, oh yeah.' He pried up the intended vent cover and jumped inside, stopping a direct drop by placing his back against one side of the vertically dropping vent and his feet against the other side, scooting himself downwards carefully. It took quite a while for Naruto to make it to the bottom silently where he started to crawl, eventually making his way to another shut ventilation grate. He could see through the grate and smirked to himself, fighting the urge to fist-pump.

He could see from the grey, dingy walls and the steel doors lined up side by side on one wall that he was in the holding cells of the 1st basement of the building. That was where he wanted to be anyway. That was the only place he could go that Meryl would be if she was still alive, and he didn't see how they would have killed her. That would have been a waste of a potential hostage.

Naruto decided to take a little risk and started banging on the grate repeatedly until he heard someone call out, "I already told both of you to knock off all of that racket!" That was Johnny's voice. This was going to be easy if that were the case, thus Naruto kept banging. Once he entered the area, Naruto stopped banging and had to stifle a laugh when Johnny didn't even go towards his location, he went to one of the cell doors to berate whoever was inside, "Don't make me have to come in there!" He threatened.

"Bite me needle-dick." Was the reply from a female voice behind the cell door.

'Gotcha Meryl.' Naruto sat back and kicked the grate as hard as he could, freeing it from its place screwed to the wall violently. He then pushed himself out as Johnny turned around and pointed his FAMAS. Of course, by the time the rookie soldier got his gun up to aim it Naruto had already grabbed a hold of the front of his face and slammed his head into the side of the door, knocking him unconscious.

Naruto rubbed the space between his nose and mouth with a big grin on his face at the easy victory, "Sorry Johnny." Naruto said, not that the masked man could hear him. He turned towards the door where he heard Meryl and looked through the peephole, "And you said that you didn't need me?" He whispered in an amused tone.

"Naruto?" Meryl said in surprise, jumping towards the door to meet his bright blue eyes at the peephole, "They said you were dead! How did you get here?"

"Shh!" Naruto shushed her quickly, using his card key to open the door to Meryl's cell before she ran out and grabbed Johnny's unconscious body, confusing Naruto as to the purpose, "Why?" Naruto asked her quietly as to why she grabbed Johnny until her tanktop hit him right in the face. Naruto slowly pulled the piece of clothing off of his face to find a topless Meryl with her back to him, pulling the clothing off of Johnny, "Whoa! Really?" He hissed lowly with a red face, though he did not look away.

"Oh be an adult." Meryl muttered as she started putting on Johnny's uniform in place of her clothes, "I heard a serious racket in the next cell before you got here." She said as she finished by taking Johnny's balaclava and weapon, putting the mask on her own face, "How else am I going to go around and try to stop this crap from happening? They know my face." She explained, "Listen, the DARPA Chief was in the cell next to me. I don't know what happened to him but it sounded like he was in pain." Meryl had the FAMAS pointed at the door with the DARPA Chief behind it, preparing to investigate.

Honestly, Naruto didn't care about the DARPA Chief, he just wanted to stop whatever was going on, but if helping Meryl would help him in the long run then he could spare a moment to see what the problem was. With this in mind, Naruto drew his MP5K and crept towards the cell, sliding it open quickly as he checked the room. He saw Donald Anderson laying face-down on the ground motionless which attracted his full attention as he walked into the cell, taking notice of the open air vent on the far wall that looked much like the way he had gotten to the cell block in the first place.

With his eyes on Anderson, Naruto almost didn't notice the figure hiding in the corner next to the door until he felt him move. Naruto turned his gun onto the man and wound up getting his MP5K knocked out of his hands. Returning the favor, Naruto swatted the man's SOCOM pistol out of his grasp, knocking it into the corner. He wound up taking a shocking punch to the face from the man that knocked him against the wall in the tiny cell.

The second his back hit the wall, Naruto spun off of it to avoid a follow up thrust kick that would have at the very least broken a few ribs had it hit him, it struck the wall with that much force. Naruto responded with a backhand punch from his opponent's blindspot that hit the man in the face, but he followed up with a side kick that made Naruto stumble and trip over the bed in the cell.

The short flurry of attacks got Meryl's attention as she appeared in the doorway pointing her FAMAS at the man attacking Naruto, "Freeze!" She ordered. The man stopped and turned towards her, giving a short grunt of dismissal before he turned his attention back to Naruto who was getting up, having turned to sit on the bed. He lifted a fist to hit Naruto again when he wound up with the blonde soldier's fist buried right in his stomach, a satisfied feeling coming from Naruto as he felt the breath forcefully leave his body.

The punch forced the man to stumble back to the outside of the cell block, knocking Meryl out of the way before she recovered and pointed her gun at the man again, "I said freeze!" Once again he didn't listen as he wound up moving towards her to disarm her with his bare hands, this was before Naruto jumped in front of her and forced the man to switch to trying a punch.

Naruto blocked it and swiped another backfist that missed once the man took a step back. He was very fast, but Naruto could make out a man in a sleek looking black outfit with a headband, "For fuck's sake stop warning him, just shoot him!" Naruto shouted as he didn't take the time to wait for Meryl to hesitate again. He didn't know who this was, but he didn't have the time to ask questions right now.

The man feigned a stutter-step forward that Naruto couldn't help but fall for, the motion was so fast. It wound up with Naruto taking a front kick to the side of the head that knocked him off balance, stumbling towards a wall. Naruto recovered as his enemy was incoming to follow up, using the wall to spring off of and spin around, delivering a mid-air kick to his head that knocked him to the ground.

No one could say that Meryl wasn't quick to action as she moved over the man and pointed her FAMAS at him, holding the barrel right over his chest, "Why did you kill the chief?" She asked him aggressively.

Too bad by now both the man and Naruto knew that she wasn't going to shoot him, "Have you ever even pointed a gun at a person?" The man on the ground asked in his rough voice, "Your hands are shaking." He grabbed the barrel of the gun and placed it right against his chest, staring Meryl right in the eyes, unnerving her with his uncaring look, "Can you shoot me rookie?"

"I'm no rookie!" Meryl said, not taking the gun away, but not firing either.

"Liar." The man on the ground said, "Those are rookie's eyes if I've ever seen them." He pointed his head towards Naruto who was wiping away a trail of blood from his mouth, "That's the real soldier over there. On the other hand you didn't even take the safety off." He narrowed his eyes in thought, "…You two aren't a part of them." He muttered.

Meryl backed off from the man, FAMAS still pointed at him as she looked over at Naruto, "You said you have a card key right?"

"Why?" Naruto asked her, not taking his eyes off of the man that was slowly getting to his feet. He wasn't like anyone on base. Who was he?

"So we can get the hell out of here!" Meryl snapped at him as if she were stating the obvious.

Naruto palmed his face. She needed to calm down and stop panicking, "Did you not listen to me when I told you _everyone_ gets a card key? You took Johnny's gear! You have one on you! Open the goddamn door yourself!" He yelled, waving his arms indignantly just as the door opened.

"A little too late for that…" The man muttered as he dove back into the cell that housed the start of his and Naruto's little skirmish to retrieve his weapon.

Naruto and Meryl turned towards the door as Genome Soldiers began swarming into the cell block, "Fuck." Naruto muttered before he noticed Meryl not firing, "What are you waiting for? Shoot!" He shouted, pulling his twin SOCOM pistols from their holsters to fire away at the soldiers to give Meryl some cover. He actually managed to take one down as he bumped her into the cell next to the one their mysterious guest went into to get his gun.

Speaking of him, he poked his head out and fired at a brave advancing Genome Soldier with his SOCOM, "Kid back me up here." He saw Naruto poke his head out and tossed Naruto his MP5K, which Naruto immediately put his pistols up in order to use. One of the two proved to be useful enough to crack his jaw already. Maybe the blonde brat was a decent shot too?

Meryl watched Naruto leave the cover of the cell to step back in the hall, backing up while firing his semi-automatic in accurate bursts. The combined fire of the two veteran soldiers managed to wind up cutting down over seven Genome Soldiers. Naruto, being the one standing in the hall had the better perspective of what was going on, "Oi weird guy, we've got more coming." He said as he took the down time to switch magazines, "Reload while we've got the opening." He looked towards Meryl who was watching the firefight, "Pick up that gun and pull the trigger, we need help!"

Hearing the edge in Naruto's voice shocked her into following his order without even thinking about it. Firing down the hall while Naruto and their temporary ally were reloading, the rattle of her assault rifle hit home, cutting down two Genome Soldiers, getting a gasp out of her at knowing that she had just taken human lives.

"Good shooting." The unknown man said, smirking at getting some adequate support from the people around him for once. Maybe he would get out of this.

Naruto's MP5K magazine ran dry just as another wave of three Genome Soldiers were creeping down the hall, moving towards the trio, "To hell with this." Naruto muttered, slinging his MP5K over his back and pulling a smoke grenade from his supply pouch as he threw it down the hall, waiting for the smoke to billow before he rushed right into the mix.

This nearly had the man with them have a conniption, "What are you doing kid?" He said as he heard sporadic gunfire and then silence. The smoke cleared to reveal Naruto… and Naruto… and another Naruto. Three Narutos holding the remainder of the Genome Soldiers at gunpoint with SOCOM pistols, "What are you?"

"Special." Naruto said before he and all of his copies pistol-whipped their hostages into sweet unconsciousness. Two of the Narutos then disappeared in puffs of smoke, "Very, very special… dattebayo." He said with a sigh, kicking one of the downed men. He then walked over to Meryl and poked her masked forehead, "Next time, please just shoot them. I'm not one for killing for useless reasons, but this was a very good moment to get rid of that little limit on my morals."

Meryl's eyes seemed to be glazed over before she swatted Naruto's hand from her head and ran down the cell block, abruptly turning once she exited the door, "Thanks for the help." She said in a rather haughty manner as she took off down the hall.

"Hey wait!" Naruto ran after her, "I was wondering if I could get your help!" Naruto propositioned, followed by the mysterious man. They were both stopped when Meryl turned at the elevator at the end of the hall and fired at them both, forcing them to take cover, "Whoa! What the hell's her problem? _Now_ she can shoot." Naruto commented towards the strange man until the fire from Meryl's weapon ceased with the closing of the elevator door.

During Meryl's erratic firing pattern pinning them both down, they both saw the shimmering appearance of Psycho Mantis in the hall right in front of her, bullets firing through him as if he were an astral projection, _"Yes dear… just like that. Your mind is strong, but it is nothing compared to… _his._"_ He said as the elevator pulled off, leaving Naruto and the intruder alone as the projection disappeared.

"Fucking Mantis..." Naruto muttered as he knew what had come over Meryl. He then noticed the man having a conversation with his hand against his ear, trying to ask someone what he had just seen, 'He has a Codec too? Who is this guy?' Naruto thought.

"So that was Mantis…" Naruto heard the man mutter before he seemed to stop his Codec conversation to pay attention to Naruto, "So since your little friend freaked out on us and ran away, who are you kid? You're not Next-Generation Special Forces or FOXHOUND."

"I was in FOXHOUND…" Naruto muttered bitterly, getting a pointed look from the strange man, "I said I _used_ to be in FOXHOUND, never officially though. I didn't want to take part in this and they kicked me out and tried to kill me." He looked over the man and gave him a smile, extending his hand for a hand shake, "Naruto Uzumaki."

The man looked at Naruto's hand and then at the blonde's diffusing smile before groaning and reaching out to shake his hand. Why not? He had just gotten through killing around a dozen or more Genome Soldiers right in front of him. He probably needed all the help he could get for this mission anyway, "Snake." He said simply, getting a wide-eyed look from Naruto, "What's the matter?"

"_You're_ Snake?" Naruto said in shock, "Solid Snake? The real Snake, not like fake-ass Liquid?" Naruto chuckled and scratched his scalp, "Damn, it's awesome to meet you. I've heard tons of things about you for years. Master always talked about you."

Snake sighed, he didn't really want to be famous, but at least Naruto didn't say something like he idolized him or anything like that. That would have been awkward, "Whatever. Do you know where the ArmsTech President is? I need to find him to get the last of the detonation codes for the nukes so that maybe I could end this thing. I can't let REX fire one off."

Naruto frowned at him and shook his head, "I don't care anything about that. Why go through all of that when you could just beat Liquid and end everything?" That was what Naruto wanted to do. Just find Liquid, skip all of the stupidity and get rid of him. That would end everything. Too bad he only had level two clearance. He needed a better card key if he actually wanted to get any further into the base, the places he knew that he was never able to reach. Even the members of FOXHOUND only had selective clearance. Liquid and Ocelot were the only ones with full reign of the entire facility.

"Orders kid." Snake explained, getting a nod of understanding from Naruto, "Well if that's the case then I'd better get going. Is there any way to get into contact with you if I need to?"

"Yeah, my channel is 141.92." Naruto told him standing up and taking this time to finally reload his MP5K, "I need to go on ahead, just so you know if you didn't already you aren't going to get too much further without a better card key." Naruto held out a yellow card with a 2 on it only to pull it back when Snake reached for it, "Whoa, you aren't getting mine, I need it. You have to find your own."

Snake growled as Naruto ran back towards the cell block faster than he could keep up with, "Where are you going?"

"To find Liquid and raise hell." Naruto told him, running past the downed Genome Soldiers before diving back into the open vent, beginning his trek back to the top of the tank hangar at the place he had gotten in from, "I know most of this place like the back of my hand. If you need some information on a certain place in the base or if you might need some backup just call me." He called down the vent as he climbed his way back up with chakra.

Snake stuck his head to look into the vent only to find Naruto climbing up through there effortlessly before disappearing up over a ledge in the air duct system. He got out and immediately went to his Codec, "Seriously, I need to know who that kid is. He's FOXHOUND but he's not FOXHOUND, he's got these weird abilities to make copies of himself, he's faster than anyone I've seen in person, he's stronger than me in this suit."

Campbell immediately tried to dredge up some kind of information on Naruto for Snake's benefit. Trying to discover if he was really friend or foe, _"I know that name is familiar to me for some reason. It's very specific, I remember it for some reason. Naomi do you know anything about this Naruto Uzumaki person?"_

"_I know something of him, but very little though."_ Naomi said, taking a moment to pull up what she could on Naruto from her station on the sub, _"Age: 18. Bloodtype: B. There is very little on him but we do know that he started popping up in certain circles of conversation in 2002. A very skilled counter-terrorist soldier, he's had workings with FOXHOUND over the last year. He's been groomed to join them apparently. I actually came into contact with him last month. He volunteered to test your Codec months prior and I implanted it in January. He… he seemed like a good person, too young to be so used to this kind of life."_ She actually sounded remorseful when speaking of him, _"I thought he was just another one of the Genome Soldiers at first. His genes were remarkable."_

"So you've spoken to him before? You can judge that he's on the up and up?" Snake questioned her. He didn't know why he didn't just ask her in the first place. Naomi had been the head of FOXHOUND's medical staff. If Naruto was supposed to be an enemy he was an enemy that Snake wanted to stay away from.

Campbell just couldn't shake the feeling that there was something about Naruto that he was supposed to know or remember, _"I wouldn't rely on him so easily either way though Snake. Just get to your mission for now. Find the ArmsTech President, you don't need to contact Naruto for that."_

That didn't sit well with Snake. This kid was running about already fighting the battle that was supposed to be his mission. Now he had the rookie that had freaked out in the middle of a battle and then shot at him once it ended, and he had another kid that could literally be anywhere running around, "Master Mi-." Snake was about to ask Miller for advice before he remembered Naruto referring to being told stories of him by a 'Master', "Master do you know the Naruto kid?"

Master Miller's voice came up in the Codec after Snake's prompting, _"I do. I taught Naruto everything I knew about how to fight in his earliest years. His skills were always a mystery though. He left and joined the U.S. Army the moment he was able. He's wild… very insubordinate, he won't follow anyone's lead and resents those in positions of power, especially those directly over him. Don't let him get close Snake. He's too dangerous to work with."_

"Well I wasn't really going to rely on him too much in the first place." Snake said dismissively so as to dissuade his support team's fears over Naruto being a wild card, "I had to know something about the kid you know? He made two copies of himself that could move and fight. He can stick to flat surfaces. That's kind of something you want to know more about."

XxX

(With Naruto – Roof of the Tank Hangar)

Naruto slipped back outside without any issue and let out a sigh, his breath materializing in the cold air, "Okay smart guy, now what?" He looked over the edge to see that Liquid had landed his Hind D back at the heliport. He had obviously gone out and put the hurt on the jets that had been flying around, putting a frown on Naruto's face as he must have passed around there at some point before heading further into the facility, "Great… now where do I go to find him?" If Liquid was down with REX then Naruto wouldn't be able to find him until he took the right key card to get there.

'Wait a minute!' Naruto thought suddenly, a plan of action springing to mind, 'The scientists had to be able to get to REX somehow to work on it in the first place. Liquid didn't put in the security measures, he just had the traps with the electric floor and the nerve gas in the lab section installed to better hold the workers hostage.' If that were the case then there had to be a card key somewhere in the lab. If he could get a better security card then there wouldn't be anywhere he couldn't go to reach Liquid.

Just as Naruto was about to head deeper into the nuclear disposal facility to enact his plan of action, his Codec went off, from a frequency he had never spoken to before, "Hello?"

"_Naruto?"_ He heard Meryl's voice come through loud and clear over the line, _"Good. This guy's communication gear works. Hey where are you?"_

A tick mark appeared on Naruto's head, "I'm on the roof of the tank hangar after dodging your bullets like The Matrix. Why'd you shoot at me and Snake?"

"_I wasn't trying to shoot at _you_."_ She tried to reason back to him, _"Something in my head told me that I had to take the other guy out, that he was dangerous. So I tried to."_ Naruto was about to tell her that the reason she did that was because of the mind control of Mantis, thinking that she hadn't had the time at all to know anything about any member of FOXHOUND when Meryl put together the second part of what he had been saying, _"Wait, that other guy was Snake? Not Liquid Snake right? So that must have been Solid Snake! Wow! I fought with the legendary soldier himself."_ She said excitedly, sounding kind of fangirl-ish.

"More like _I_ fought with him… and against him." Naruto quipped, not missing out on an opportunity to take a jab at someone no matter the situation. A little something he must have picked up from Ocelot, "You just stood there looking pretty… and then you shot at him when we stopped." He then let out a chuckle, "Actually you didn't even do the 'looking pretty' part. You were dressed like a guy."

"_Shut up…"_ She muttered in return, obviously embarrassed to say the very least, _"That will never happen again. And this is a disguise, duh. Every Genome Soldier is wearing this stuff. What, do you want me to walk around looking like you?"_

"I don't walk around though." Naruto said, walking around the roof, trying to keep the blood flowing through his legs properly, "I'm a ninja. I can do all kinds of things, and I don't get caught out in the open unless I want to be. You aren't going to see me unless I want you to… or you've got some kind of thermal goggles to see me in the dark better."

Meryl stifled a laugh, _"A ninja, right. I'll believe that when I see it."_

"You mean when you _don't_ see it." Came the cheeky reply from Naruto before he got serious again, "Where are you?"

"_Going to help Snake."_ Meryl answered, _"You should be fine on your own right? You know this place better than anyone, you said so yourself."_

"I guess but I was-." He didn't really get to respond because she cut the transmission right then, eliciting a sigh from Naruto, "I didn't know that soldiers got groupies…" Naruto muttered to himself. Well there went his idea of getting himself some help. Someone like Snake would only go after his own mission objectives and once Meryl found out how to reach Snake he wouldn't be able to pry her away, "Fine… That's okay, I do my best work with a handicap."

He felt he had said that before in a similar situation, and déjà vu hit him, getting him to drop to the roof on his belly as if he were about to get his head taken off. When nothing happened, Naruto took solace in the fact that at least nobody saw him do something so embarrassing, "Better safe than sorry."

"Is that what you call it?" A gravelly voice called out from nearby. Naruto immediately reached for his MP5K, getting a chuckle from the figure that he couldn't see, grunting angrily to himself at his inability to spot the figure with just his eyes, "I have to wonder though, have you found your reason for fighting?" He asked almost in a taunting manner, "Your enemies have."

Naruto couldn't make out where the voice was coming from, even with the full moon bathing the open rooftop through the snow, "Why do you even care? Who are you?"

"I'm like you." The voice said, "A child born into a life of war. And now I've finally been turned into the weapon I had been fashioned to be from the beginning. Neither alive nor dead, just existing. Existing to fight. And you are on your way to a life like that boy." Silence reigned between them for a moment before the man's voice spoke up again, "Or maybe I should just end it before you _do_ become like me. It would be the merciful thing to do."

At that moment, Naruto was grateful that he had been able to personalize his ballistic vest. He had taken the first opportunity he could to do so, making it denser with far more material after remembering how Olga's ballistic knife bullet passed through his standard issue vest in Iraq. His vest was far heavier than most, but the protection provided was far greater, and he had the speed to sacrifice for it. It actually reminded him of the weights possessed by one Rock Lee in Konoha, just not that intense.

The reason being, he wound up taking a heavy slash with something across his chest. It didn't reach his body though it did knock him down. Naruto quickly jumped back up to his feet and formed a clone to go back-to-back with him, a kunai and a SOCOM pistol drawn for both of them.

This didn't do much but give Naruto an early warning radar as to where the person attacking him might be, as when his clone was killed he immediately dove away from where his clone had been standing at his back, firing in the general direction of where the attacker might be, only to hit nothing, 'Great, I can't see him.' Naruto thought to himself before moving towards the edge of the roof, trying to keep the amount of places his assailant could be to just the space in front of him.

"Ah, a trapped rat." The gravelly voice spoke aloud as Naruto neared the edge, "Cornering yourself thinking that you would give yourself a fighting chance at surviving by taking away your other options."

'This guy really likes to talk. Why does everyone older than me think they need to talk my ear off when we fight?' Naruto narrowed his eyes in forceful concentration, 'Come on, focus! It's just stealth camouflage, you can beat this!' He could see erratic patterns in the snowfall, but he thought that to be just the wind blowing the snow about… until he realized that there was no wind at all.

Naruto quickly fired his SOCOM at the disrupted snow pattern and saw the stealth camouflage deactivate to reveal a man that looked like a futuristic ninja. Naruto emptied his entire clip at the ninja only for him to block every bullet with the sword in his hands, 'Bullshit, I can't do that.' Naruto thought bitterly as the ninja heard the empty click of Naruto's pistol and came forward to attack him.

Naruto ducked a slash meant for his head and in the same motion drove his kunai through the ninja's foot, rolling through underneath him and avoiding the attack altogether. Naruto licked his lips in anticipation now that he could definitely see his enemy for sure, "Oi, I didn't know that I was beta testing the new season of Power Rangers." He quipped, "Because I give that costume two thumbs down. You look like you lost a fight to a paint gun."

The joke was clearly lost on the strange Cyborg Ninja, not knowing or caring of Naruto's reference, "You have an instinct for battle just like I knew you would. You specialize in nothing the way the other members of FOXHOUND do. Instead you adapt to whatever situations you can handle and you learn best under duress." He reached down and pulled Naruto's kunai from his foot, not even flinching as he did so, "Now let's see how well you perform with your life on the line."

"Don't talk like you've got the advantage, I can see you now prick!" Naruto shouted, forming two Kage Bunshin to back him up, making them rush the Cyborg Ninja first, throwing some shuriken at him. This was futile since if he could stop bullets with his sword how wouldn't he be able to stop slower moving shuriken? This wasn't the bulk of Naruto's plan however, he just needed the ninja to focus on something else so that he could make two more clones on the fly that took the blind spots on both sides of the ninja, both diving at him.

One clone went low, the other high in their diving attempts, but the Cyborg Ninja just jumped over the low clone and used his sword to cut through the high attacking clone, dispelling it. It left him open for a counter-attack from the real Naruto though, as the original didn't miss a beat, driving a jumping kick right into the Cyborg Ninja's chest, sending him flying back through the snow on the roof.

Naruto's two other clones flew through the air and attempted to finish him off with crushing diving heel drops, but the Cyborg Ninja still had his sword in hand and cut right through them.

The original Naruto was intending to follow up and finish with his all-around destroyer technique Rasengan, when his clones were killed, breaking his concentration for the technique and letting the Cyborg Ninja to get back up to his feet. Naruto's eyes were firmly on the sword that the Cyborg Ninja had, "You're the reason that the Genome Soldiers were so edgy these last few days. A few of them disappeared… and they were convinced that they weren't accidents or anything."

It was the main reason that Naruto didn't question Meryl being brought in earlier that day as a replacement, but this guy was the one that caused them. Naruto actually saw a dead body of a Genome Soldier over the last week. Liquid tried to say it was an accident, but being that he was the only person on the entire base that ever used blades of any kind, and Naruto was certain that he'd remember killing a jackass Genome Soldier, there had to be some kind of slasher running around.

And now he met a ninja attacking him with a sword.

"I would love to play with you more…" The Cyborg Ninja stated, "But I'm actually not here for you so I'll have to leave you. Don't disappoint me now."

'Disappoint this.' At that moment, the mental connection between Naruto's clones and himself came in handy as his final remaining clone had drawn the MP5K, taken the forefront, and attempted to fire on the Cyborg Ninja, only resulting in the ninja throwing the kunai he had confiscated from Naruto earlier, hitting Naruto's shooting clone in the head and stunning the original with the backlash of his clone's death for a split-second.

This gave the Cyborg Ninja enough time to cut through all of the ventilation ducts with his powerful sword and activate his stealth camouflage before diving into one, not letting Naruto see which one he took to escape.

Naruto growled to himself, walking over to his displaced kunai and grabbing it putting it back with his other equipment. He touched the deep gash that sat in the middle of his vest and sighed, "I'm going to need to get this replaced, it's pretty useless now… To the barracks then." He said to himself as he moved to leave the roof of the tank hangar. He needed to grab more stuff anyway. He'd need his pack if he really wanted to try and do anything to stop Liquid and the others, "I need my other cooler toys anyway."

XxX

(With Snake – Tank Hangar B2 – Armory South Backroom)

Snake found the ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker tied between multiple pillars with C4 strapped to his body, set to go off if anyone tampered with it. Before he could deal with that however, he had to deal with the arrival of Revolver Ocelot who had been waiting for him. The two then battled to a stalemate with Ocelot even ricocheting shots off of the walls.

"You're pretty good." Ocelot said, hiding behind a pillar with his signature revolver at the ready, "You're pretty good." He said, ejecting the used shell casings from his gun, "Just what I expected from the man who shared codenames with Boss. It's been a long time since I had such a good fight." He said, adrenaline pumping through the old Russian cowboy's body as he reloaded, "I'm just getting warmed up though…" He said as he finished reloading and spun his gun in his usual showy manner.

He moved out from behind cover to fire at Snake when in a flash his gun hand was severed from the rest of his arm effortlessly, "What? Gah!" Ocelot exclaimed once the now useless appendage hit the concrete floor, "My hand!" Blood spurted from the stump as Ocelot held his wrist.

It went unseen as the wires holding up the ArmsTech President were cut, allowing him to fall to the ground and avoid the C4 explosions. Said explosions knocked Ocelot back against a concrete wall. Snake watched the scene, utterly confused at what he was seeing. One minute he had been fighting while unable to go all out due to Baker being a hostage, the next everything had been turned on its head and started going his way.

"Stealth camouflage…" Ocelot muttered, biting back the pain from his severed hand. He looked at the center of the room where he could see the discrepancy in the air, glaring at it hatefully, "Can't you even die right?" He asked snarkily as the stealth camouflage faded to show the Cyborg Ninja with his sword out. Ocelot picked his hand up, the hand still gripping his revolver, and ran from the room, "You were lucky." He said to Snake, "We'll meet again!"

With Ocelot gone, Snake turned his focus and his gun on the Cyborg Ninja that was walking towards him, "Who are you?" He asked sharply. He had already dealt with enough unknown quantities tonight, he didn't need another.

"I am like you." The ninja said with no malice in his gravely voice, "I have no name." He then turned as Kenneth Baker started groaning and getting up, the red eye in the middle of the Cyborg Ninja's helmet momentarily glowing red.

Baker's first sight was the Cyborg Ninja as his eyes focused on him, "That exoskeleton…" He muttered at seeing the inhuman frame covering the being.

The red eye of the Cyborg Ninja crackled once before electricity surged through his body and he seemed to snap, shouting, seemingly in torment before moving faster than Snake had seen, probably faster than Naruto had moved when he had escaped him earlier. The ninja turned his stealth camouflage on and darted all over the room before heading outside of it, leaving Snake and Baker alone."

"Who the hell?" Snake said to himself, lowering his pistol now that the danger seemed to be over for now. He instead turned his attention to Baker who was unable to stand due to an injured leg that he hadn't noticed before. Moving towards the downed man he helped him up, maybe now he could get some traction with his mission and find out how to stop Metal Gear REX that the DARPA Chief told him about. Snake set the injured man against a wall to rest.

Baker looked up at Snake, "A-Are you from the Pentagon? Did Jim Houseman send you?"

"There's no time." Snake said, keeping the origin of his commands secret by not giving him one answer or the other, "Do you have the codes?"

Baker looked down, not able to meet Snake's eyes, "I… I talked."

"What?" That was not good and Snake knew it, "Now the terrorists have both codes, they can launch anytime!"

"It's not like I didn't fight!" Baker argued in return, "I was able to resist Psycho Mantis and his mind probe techniques."

"He couldn't read you?" Snake asked suspiciously. How the DARPA Chief cracked to Mantis and this wimpy guy didn't he couldn't fathom, "How'd you do it?"

"Surgical implants in my brain… kind of like a psychic insulation." Baker tried to explain, favoring his injured leg as he held a cane in his hand, "Everyone who knows these top secret codes has them."

"Even the DARPA Chief?" Snake tried to feel out.

"Of course." Baker told him. But then what about Snake's earlier conversation with Donald Anderson before the DARPA Chief suddenly dropped dead?

"Anderson told me that they got the codes from him by Mantis reading his mind." Snake informed Baker. It was quite strange that the Chief was as mellow as he was. He should have been pacing back and forth in that cell Snake found him in.

Baker looked at Snake in confusion. There was no way that it went down like that, "Are you sure you heard him right?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Snake asserted. There was no way he wasn't listening during such an important time, "In that case, how did they get your code?"

Baker once again looked away, holding his injured leg, "I never had any training in resisting torture." He said before coughing.

Frowning at the rather haggard appearance of the ArmsTech President, Snake commented on such, "It looks like he had some fun with you alright…" Ocelot probably went overboard on this guy just because. He didn't look like he could take much physical torture.

"He's not human I tell you." Baker said between coughs, "He loved every second of it." He said as he looked at his damaged arm, noticing Snake doing the same, he then answered the unasked question, "He broke it."

Snake smirked down at the man, "It looks like you're more than even now. His was cut off."

Baker coughed out some laughter, "You're a very funny man." He then got back to the dire issue at hand, "So the DARPA Chief… is he okay?"

"Dead." Snake stated gravely.

And Baker responded accordingly in shock, "What? That can't be!" He started hitting Snake weakly in the thigh with his cane, seeming scared of the man, "That's not what you promised me Jim! Now you want to shut me up!" He said as if the man he was referencing was actually listening to them.

Snake grabbed the can tightly and glared down at the man, "Calm down! I just told you I was here to save you!" He said, ducking down to Baker's level to get in his face, "I didn't _kill_ the DARPA Chief. He had a heart attack or something."

"Bullshit." Baker said as Snake stood back up now that he was calm, "Don't be stupid."

Snake stared at the man with a twitching eye before pacing away to get some space, "Anyway, the terrorists have both of the codes now."

"Those boys are totally insane." Baker commented hatefully, "They wouldn't hesitate to launch." Didn't madmen like these 'Sons of Big Boss' know what would occur if a nuke was launched?

"I agree." Snake said, "But what do they really want out of all of this?"

"Who knows?" Baker remarked dismissively, "Maybe they're like us in the arms industry? Always looking forward to the next good war." He didn't know that he was semi-correct on that front.

Snake growled angrily. What was it with people always wanting to start so much chaos for no reason? He didn't get it, "Well I'm not letting these maniacs start a war today. Do you still have the card keys Anderson told me you had to override the detonation codes?"

"Not anymore." Baker informed him, "The terrorists don't either." He said before Snake could flip out on him, "That woman… a soldier who was thrown in prison along with me. She had just joined up as a new recruit. They locked her up because she refused to take part in the revolt… a better fate than that other boy that she said they told her was killed. I gave her the key."

'It must be the Colonel's niece.' Snake thought to himself, remembering the talk he had with Campbell about the masked soldier who had been with him and Naruto, "I'm sure she's okay. She's green but she's pretty tough. How'd you know she got away?"

"I was in contact with her by Codec until I was tied up here." Baker said, "You should be able to reach her too, she stole her communication device from a guard. Her frequency is…" He started to tell Snake before he got an apologetic look on his face, "Sorry, I forgot."

Snake fought the urge to turn around and bang his head against one of the pillars, 'Every single time I end up doing this shit… Maybe Naruto knows it. I'll call him later.' "If that key of yours doesn't work is there any other way to stop the launch?"

Baker racked his brain trying to think of another potential solution, "You need to find Hal Emmerich, one of my employees. He's REX's main designer, if anyone can tell you it would be him. If he doesn't have anything then you'll have to find some way to destroy it. He's somewhere in the nuclear warhead storage building north of here. The labs are there."

"Why have him create a Metal Gear though?" Snake asked, remembering how the world was held hostage twice by those things, two different models that he had to deal with directly himself, "The nuclear age ended with the turn of the century."

"You have no idea do you?" Baker said, "I'll tell you right now just why it's more intense than it's ever been."

XxX

(With Naruto – Canyon Wall Top)

Naruto would have been running along the top of the canyon wall, but he didn't for two reasons. One was so that he could burrow underneath the thick snow to hide himself remembering that this had been around the area where he had to deal with Sniper Wolf. Even if others didn't patrol up there he could still be spotted. The other reason was because he saw a tank trying to hide down in the canyon itself, 'I do not want any part of a tank, even if I could beat it.' He thought to himself as he continued to crawl and dig with his taped hands and a kunai.

If he was going to do something asinine like fight a tank he needed his explosives. All he had in the way of that sort of ordinance were his smoke bombs and smoke grenades which were meant for surprise attacks. There wasn't anything that would do to a tank but get him killed.

He could use the Kyuubi's chakra. His Kyuubi-powered Rasengan would probably turn the hull of that tank into one-ply toilet paper if his fight with Sasuke all those years ago was any indication of how strong it could be. But he didn't need to go on a killing spree or let anyone know he was still alive yet. The longer he could go moving about as a glorified ghost of sorts the better it would be for him when he finally found Liquid and got the opportunity to take him down.

At that moment his Codec went off. Naruto stopped crawling under the snow and touched his fingers to his ear, "Hello? I'm kind of between a rock and a cold place right now. Could you call me back?"

"_Naruto Uzumaki?"_ A woman's voice said on the other end of the call.

"Yeah, this is him." He said in an exasperated voice. Who the hell was calling him and how did they even know his channel? Only nine people knew it and seven of them thought he was dead. Six would once Johnny woke up and realized that it had been Naruto that had put his lights out in the cell block, but that wasn't the point, "Who is this and how did you get this frequency?"

He heard the woman give him a pleasant laugh, _"Well I would certainly hope I knew the frequency seeing as how I'm the one that implanted the Codec in your ear in the first place."_

Realization sprang over Naruto's face and a smile crossed it. There was only one person he had met that implanted his Codec and was a woman, "Doctor Naomi Hunter! Wait, before you ask at all since you probably know by now, I didn't rebel with the rest of FOXHOUND. I was-."

"_We know Naruto."_ Naomi said, stopping his tangent before he could really launch into it, _"What are you trying to accomplish here?"_

Naruto frowned at the way she had stated the question, "I'm trying to stop Liquid's stupid plan before he starts a nuclear war. I'm pretty sure his haven for soldiers isn't supposed to be a wasteland full of nuclear fallout, because that's all he's going to have if he's really crazy enough to launch a nuke." He then blinked as he thought about something, "If I steal REX then can I keep it?"

Silence reigned over the line for a second as if Naomi was stunned by what she had just heard, _"Wha-? Are you serious?"_

"Yeah." Naruto said, "If I kick Liquid's ass and then steal REX right in front of his face and blow him up with it can I keep it? I mean saving the world has to have some kind of perk for the hero doesn't it?" How hard could it be to drive? He could steal it… probably. He could drive everything else so why not a Metal Gear?

"_I don't even know how to dignify that with a response Naruto…"_ Naomi said. He could just see her shaking her head at him from wherever she was, _"Look, you've been close to Snake haven't you?"_

"Yeah." Naruto answered, taking a moment to work his jaw, "Close enough to punch each other in the face a few times. Why? What's his Codec frequency by the way?" He could hear chattering between Naomi and someone else in the background of wherever she was, "What's the matter?"

An older man's voice then came over the line, _"Naruto this is Colonel Roy Campbell. For your own safety I need you to stay away from Snake for the remainder of the mission. We're grateful that you want to help him, but it's too dangerous for you."_

Listening to the man's words, Naruto had a terse look with a twitching eyebrow, "Is this a stupid age thing?"

"_If you want to put it that way then yes. Yes it is. Find the other girl that was with you and keep her safe if you need a mission to do."_

"There's nowhere to run or hide on this island!" Naruto exclaimed, "Where exactly do you want me to take her to? There's no boat off of here and Liquid's stupid Hind is guarded so tight I couldn't take it and keep her safe at the same time on my best day, Genome Soldiers are running around all over the place. The safest place to be is actually _deeper_ in the base."

Campbell let out an angry sigh and spoke up more forceful than before, _"This is no time for any movie-style heroics! Listen to me, if you can't follow this order then-."_

"-Then you'll what?" Naruto replied heatedly, "In case you haven't noticed the only chain of command that matters to me is currently trying to ransom the U.S. Government with nuclear weapons, and there's some freaky ninja running around here with stealth camouflage that almost took my head off not even an hour ago. I'm technically not even a part of the armed forces anymore, so I don't have to listen to you. What are you going to do, kick me off of FOXHOUND? Too late. Court martial me? Yeah, good luck with that if I even make it out of this in enough pieces." With his bit being said, Naruto didn't want to hear anymore and shut his Codec off. They wanted him to back off of trying to stop the insurrection? No one could do this by themselves, why did they want him to not help Snake?

"Movie-style heroics?" Naruto muttered to himself as he kept crawling his way to his next destination, "Asshole… I haven't even seen a movie in years."

XxX

(U.S.S. Discovery – Bering Sea)

"Damn it." Campbell muttered as he heard Naruto's line go out. He was an older stout man wearing a grey military suit and a beret, "He doesn't know what's going on. He was lucky to survive getting close to Snake once… I don't see how he did if everything is going as it should. You knew he was a member of FOXHOUND didn't you Naomi?"

Naomi was sitting nearby at her own station. She was a young woman with long dark hair and brown eyes. She wore a brown skirt and shoes with a white medical coat on over the rest of her clothing, "Like I said earlier, I figured him to be a Genome Soldier for quite a while until I went over what I was able to find from his checkup he had to undergo before testing the Codec. I remember him because of his demeanor; it was more pleasant than I was used to."

"So you're saying that the virus isn't set to take Naruto out?" Campbell tried to figure, seeing as how the main doctor was right there with him.

Naomi shook her head, "Once I learned who he was after our meeting I tried to program it to his DNA and make him a target, but his body is incredible. His immune system will cast out any foreign antibodies in mere moments. Every immunization he has ever had might as well have not even been given to him since his body just cast it out as well. Nothing like the virus that was constructed can touch him on a biological level."

'So he's not going to be infected by FOXDIE…' Campbell thought to himself before putting out a call on his radio, sighing as he spoke to the person he had just contacted once the confidential conversation was complete, "You were right about what you said about the Naruto kid Master Miller. He is very insubordinate."

Miller's voice came over the radio that was stationed aboard the submarine, _"I told you as much. I always knew that the boy would be trouble as a soldier. He has no discipline at all. He's too much of a maverick for any fighting force's own good."_

Campbell then noted the conversation to end as Miller signed out, 'Still he was lucky… his body is able to fight off the walking biological weapon that we unleashed into Shadow Moses to take out any rogue elements to the secrecy of this mission. The Pentagon won't be happy about this.'

XxX

(With Snake – Tank Hangar B2 – South Armory Backroom)

Snake could only watch as after telling Snake everything he knew about what was going on, Baker began to convulse in pain for no apparent reason at all, just like what had happened with the DARPA Chief, 'Oh no, this can't seriously be happening again.'

"What… What did you do to me?" Baker struggled to say, gasping for dear life, "No it can't be… Those Pentagon bastards! They actually went and did it!" He said, realizing what was happening to himself, although by now it was too late to do anything about it.

"What are you talking about?" Snake hadn't the faintest idea what was happening to this man. One second he was fine, the next he was dying.

"They're just using you…" Baker managed to get out before he stopped convulsing and slumped forward where he was sitting, going limp and expiring on the spot.

"What the hell?" Snake said to himself before he went to his Codec, "Colonel, are you listening? Now he's dead too!"

"_I have no idea!"_ Campbell replied over the line.

"Don't lie to me!" Snake snapped at him. The chances of this happening to him twice in little more than an hour with two VIPs he had come in contact to rescue. He wasn't an idiot.

Naomi chimed in to comment, _"It sounds like another heart attack, but..."_

Snake tried to muse over the options of what could have happened because it was no naturally occurring heart attack, "Some kind of poison?" There was no way he could tell exactly what killed Baker. He didn't have the means to do an autopsy or something like that.

"_Snake I want you and Meryl to work together. Get in contact with her somehow."_ Campbell requested of the soldier, having earlier informed him that he was Meryl's uncle.

"Can I trust her?" He asked in return, remembering getting shot at not too long ago.

"_More than you can trust me…"_

"What about the Naruto kid?"

"_Don't worry about him."_ Campbell said before pausing for a bit, _"We're counting on you Snake."_ With that, the transmission ended, leaving Snake alone again.

The man sighed and took out his pack of cigarettes, bending the end to light the special smokes, "Yeah I know…" He said to himself.

* * *

><p><strong>First thing, to anonymous reviewer Doom Marine 58… You're retarded. No shit. I knew that; a 14 year old can't join the army and would have less of a chance of going to Ranger School. Duh. <strong>

**It's clear that **_**you**_** don't know anything about the Metal Gear world; a **_**fictional**_** world structured around the AU modern world warped by events that had taken place even before WWII where child soldiers, conspiracies, people that can control electricity, people that can talk to ghosts, cyborg ninjas, giant bipedal tanks, routine genocide, periodical nuclear threat, and world domination through regional manipulation and veiled warfare all masterminded and controlled by a goddamn system of computers runs rampant among all kinds of other things. **

**And to say that I devalue Kishimoto's work with my asinine taunts, you do know that I've written 6 other fanfiction stories for Naruto and that my taunts get waaay worse than just what you've read in this story don't you? Yeah I sure hate Kishimoto sooo much… devoting so much time and effort into my own interpretation of his works for no benefit of my own (sarcasm). Get over yourself.**

**Alright now that my random periodic build-up of piss and vinegar is all out and done with, chapter complete. I really hope the sequence of events is clear. If I went through all of the scenes of what happened to Snake in the game these chapters would make it 20k at least, I'm sure. I've given enough information for you to get the gist of what has happened if you haven't played the game I think.**

**Good stuff is forthcoming next chapter so wait it out my people. Kenchi out.**


	8. The Buddy System

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Way to take a sledgehammer to all of my hopes and dreams world.

**Chapter 8: The Buddy System**

* * *

><p>Naruto stood in the second basement of the nuclear warhead storage building staring at the clearly electrified floor from behind the protective glass door that came before actually walking through the halls. Now normally this wouldn't be much of a problem at all, as Naruto would have walked on the ceiling to get to where he wanted to go. The problem with that in this case was that the entire hallway was full of nerve gas.<p>

He thought Sniper Wolf was just joking about that… he should have known better.

No key card for Naruto, not this way at least.

"Fucking Liquid…" Naruto muttered to himself before getting back on the elevator and hitting the button, "Fine… maybe I've got something in my room that can help me with this. If they haven't cleaned it out yet that is." It had only been a few hours. Maybe he still had some of his gear hidden in there. The paranoia he had developed after being taken for experimentation more than a year ago had to pay off somehow didn't it?

As was his luck it seemed, once the elevator opened on the first basement floor apparently there was someone smart enough to actually guard this location, meaning that they heard it show up. Naruto wound up having to hide as best he could against the wall with the panel of buttons on it as the guard walked in to check the elevator, and as he slipped out unnoticed he had to thank himself for being so fast as he headed down the hall towards the barracks area.

No one seemed to be aware of the fact that he was still alive and inside of the heart of Shadow Moses besides Snake and Meryl and that was the best thing that could happen for him. Speaking of Snake, the man called him shortly after his entrance into the nuclear warhead storage building and like a helpful ally Naruto gave him Meryl's Codec frequency when he asked for it, and he didn't even bother to bitch at Snake for his busybody support team that tried to get him to back off. He was such a good person wasn't he?

Besides… once Snake got himself outside of the tank hangar he'd have that tank to deal with since Naruto was quite sure that he couldn't do what he did and just bypass it. Ooh, he forgot to tell him about that. Well maybe he managed to get himself out of it?

…He'd probably better call and make sure just in case.

After he grabbed his stuff. He needed the rest of his gear in case _he_ got caught up fighting something like a tank because there was still one in the tank hangar and with his luck he'd probably be facing it down himself if he couldn't keep himself concealed for too much longer.

Naruto created a Kage Bunshin and ordered it to keep the elevator clear of Genome Soldiers but stay concealed and keep it quiet. Maybe that would make it easier for Snake when he made it to the building. He could only hope so.

Navigating the halls that he had spent months going up and down out of sheer boredom was rather easy when he was moving with some purpose, and it didn't take him long to reach the barracks wing of the floor where he heard gunfire almost immediately, 'No way he made it here that fast, he only had a level one key card.' Naruto thought in reference to Snake as he went to investigate what was going on.

He was not to be disappointed when he found a squad of Genome Soldiers in a shootout with someone cornered at the end of a corridor. Luckily for him he had their backsides and they never heard or felt him coming. He had the ability to make four more clones and each clone had two pistols, all of them wound up being held up at the back of the Genome Soldiers' heads, the click of the SOCOMs immediately stopping their fire as the soldiers realized that they were held up execution style.

"Wow I just caught an attack squad of Genome Soldiers and they never even saw my face. Either I'm just that damn good or you guys just suck that bad." The original Naruto said brightly before he and all of his clones pushed the pistols hard into their heads, "Get those radios off and onto the ground please." Naruto 'asked' politely, a symphony of radios hitting the ground followed shortly thereafter by the Genome Soldiers doing the same after getting clubbed in their heads by Naruto and his clones, "Who needs a unit or a team? I'm my own damn team." He said as he and his clones grabbed the unconscious soldiers and threw them into a room without their weapons or communication devices.

A FAMAS poked itself around the corner of a room at the end of the hall only for Meryl without a balaclava to pop out and investigate what had occurred, "Oh thank goodness…" She exhaled in relief when she saw Naruto and his copies taking care of business, "I've got to ask you how you do that."

The clones dispelled as Naruto smashed the electronic panel to the door, forcing it to lock the Genome Soldiers in, "I've got to ask you why the hell they were shooting at you, weren't you walking around 'in disguise'?" He finished, taunting with airy hand gestures.

"I took off the balaclava to talk to Snake." Meryl returned, turning away from Naruto with her arms crossed before she realized something, "Damn, I think I messed my Codec up when I started to run away."

Naruto motioned for her to follow him as he led the way with one of his SOCOM pistols, resuming the skulking through the halls to find his room, "Why'd you take the mask off? It's not like he can see you, it's a radio." He remarked dryly, "Besides, you would have gotten caught eventually. Anyone that pays attention can tell that you don't walk like a guy."

"W-What?" Meryl hissed at him lowly, fighting down the urge to strangle him. He had gotten her out of jail and had kept her from potentially getting shot up in a firefight against an entire squad, "I can't even believe that with all that's happening you took the time to look at-."

Naruto cut her off, standing straight up from his sneaking crouch once he found his familiar hallway as he continued to lead her along, "-I am an eighteen year old dude that has spent the better part of an entire year around one woman max, period. You're pretty cute, and you didn't look back when you got out of my jeep this morning. And it was a long walk from where I parked to the building you had to go into."

Only able to stare at him with a slightly agape jaw, Meryl quickly recovered, "You are such a pervert, do you know that?"

Naruto could only let out a chuckle, "No I'm not… I'd be a pervert if it got in the way of me doing my job or functioning like a normal person but it doesn't." He shot a knowing look back at her, "It's not like girls don't think about that stuff either. You're telling me you seriously didn't try to size me up when we first met?"

"No." Was Meryl's abrupt reply.

"What about Snake then?" Naruto asked with a grin on his face, "After I told you it was him you probably thought about the little run-in with him… you probably called him right after you stopped the call to me."

"No way." Meryl said as she looked around the wing of rooms. She never really got to explore the place very much at all before she wound up getting thrown in the cell block for not joining the rebellion, "Do you know how much psychotherapy I've had to prevent attraction to boys like you? Not a chance I'd ever think about either of you like that."

Naruto didn't even bother rising to that little bit of information out loud, 'Wow… you got psychotherapy? For that? I could rip into you right now with so many jokes, but now's not the time.' They eventually made it to Naruto's room that looked just as ruined as it had when he had left, "Great, they didn't take anything." He said happily as he kicked the fallen bed out of the way and went inside.

"Is this your room?" Meryl asked him as she stood guard over the door and heard Naruto rummaging around inside, "I got caught around here you know. Those guys were all ransacking the room for your stuff. There's nothing here for you anymore."

"But they didn't find everything. I had to leave them something to find so that no one searching would know any better." Naruto replied as he grabbed a kunai and ripped into his mattress to bring a bigger smile to his face. Inside the mattress sat a similar ballistic vest just the same as the damaged one he had been wearing, a replica Dragunov to the one that he had trained with for the bulk of his learning period along with enough magazines to make it useful to him, several bricks of semtex, and a ton of grenades; some singular to be used to throw, some bundled together for a rather deadly trap set up.

Hearing him rip into a mattress, Meryl turned around and saw his stash of weaponry and equipment within the sleeping device, "Wow, you probably didn't get a good night's sleep ever." She remarked as he hurriedly tossed his damaged vest and replaced it with the pristine one, "Why did you hide all of this stuff?"

Naruto shrugged as he loaded himself up with all of his gear, "I'm a very nice person if you haven't noticed by now..." Meryl nodded, he was a pretty nice guy when he wasn't poking fun at her, "Nice guys get shot." He said abruptly, "If I'm going to be a nice guy then I'd better fight like a jerk. I don't face my opponents down head-to-head, I don't have all of my weapons out in the open, I don't even let my comrades see how I really train. That last one really came in handy for this."

"Why?" She asked as Naruto walked past her back out of the doorway.

"Because Liquid thinks that I suck." Naruto answered her with a hard look in his eye, "He never sent me on any missions that would have shown him otherwise. The mission I had with Wolf in Iraq where I should have died he thought I got lucky. Even with my powers he thinks that he can beat me when it comes down to it."

Meryl looked at Naruto curiously as started back down the hallway again, "You're saying that he can't? You can beat FOXHOUND's commander?"

"I wouldn't bet against me." Was the cryptic reply from Naruto before he turned around to her, "Snake is probably here by now. Do you really want to follow me around? I'm not going to try and meet up with him, we've got different goals." Snake wanted to make sure Metal Gear REX couldn't be used, Naruto just wanted to get rid of Liquid so that the whole threat was neutralized at its base.

Meryl rubbed her shoulder sheepishly, "I don't have my Codec anymore. I won't be able to talk to him." She turned her eyes up to him, "Maybe I should stay with you? I already found you." She sounded almost hopeful that he would say yes. Getting cornered and shot at by oneself would really make someone not want to be left alone again he guessed.

At that moment, Naruto's mental connection with his clone that he had left hiding on the elevator informed him that Snake was in the building as he had taken the elevator to the second basement floor, "Snake is here though. In the building." He'd have to apologize for forgetting to tell him about the tank in the canyon later, "If you put your balaclava back on and just patrol like normal then I'll make sure he finds you."

"What are you going to do?" Meryl didn't feel one-hundred percent safe with going back under the hood as a Genome Soldier. She had gotten caught once, though that was mostly her own fault, but Naruto had pointed out that she could be identified and that kind of stuck with her mindset, "What if I need your help?"

Naruto gave her a reassuring smile, "Snake's going to need your help more than you'll need mine." That might not have been true but he did better working by himself. His battle style would be seen as reckless by anyone that was trained in a conventional manner, it wasn't really meant to work with others unless those others were his Kage Bunshin who would be given orders on how to fight to back him up the right way. Other than that, unless Naruto himself chose to fight in a conventional manner which he rather disliked doing, having someone fight with him would be dangerous for them, especially a rookie like Meryl, "Just stay around the lobby, around the bathrooms."

"You never answered me." Meryl insisted with a pout on her face, "Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?"

Naruto frowned as he thought about what he was going to do, "I need to find some way to get the door open in the warhead storage room so that you guys can go further." Naruto could just bypass buildings by climbing things. Others didn't have that ability so he had to clear the way for them, "I'm going to help you guys out and try to go ahead. Some guy named Campbell wanted me to protect you anyway and you wouldn't be safe with me." He finished before taking off down the hall to leave, not noticing the shocked look on her face.

"What?" Meryl asked Naruto before he got out of her sight and turned a corner, "Was that my uncle he was talking about?" She asked herself before putting the balaclava back on her face to hide again.

XxX

(Some Time Later – Warhead Storage Room – Nuclear Warhead Storage Building)

Naruto observed the massive shut doors that sat shut. He simply didn't know how to open the doors without the right level of clearance and the lab where he might have been able to get a better key card was apparently off-limits for him as long as he didn't have a way to get through the nerve gas in the hall, so he wasn't going to be able to open this door at all by himself. How was he supposed to get any further into the facility from here.

At that moment he got a call on his Codec. For not having anyone actually giving him support his Codec sure was seeing a lot of action, "Hello?"

"_Kid?"_ Snake's voice came through into his ear, _"I found Meryl in disguise, she's changing back into her normal clothes right now since that disguise won't do anymore good. Where are you?"_

"On the way." Naruto said, holding his hand to his ear as he made his way back to the elevator in a hurry, "Don't worry I know where you are. I told her to stay put where you found her to wait for you in case you needed her help."

He heard Snake chuckle, _"Good call, because I actually needed her for the PAL key she had on her. Now I can stop REX once I get to it. We're heading to the communication towers next, watch out for Gray Fox though… I don't know where he went off to after our fight in the lab."_

'He was in the lab?' Naruto wondered in his head before he thought of the second part of Snake's words, "Wait, Gray Fox is here too? What the hell is this, FOXHOUND reunion night?"

"_He's not himself anymore I'm afraid. He was turned into a cyborg ninja two years ago by Dr. Clark… he's dangerous Naruto. Be careful."_

Naruto simply remained silent as the names kept hitting him. Dr. Clark was the woman that had experimented on him two years ago, she had Gray Fox too? Gray Fox was still alive? Gray Fox was the cyborg ninja that he had fought? What exactly was that bitch doing with him and Grey Fox? "I'll… I'll be there in a bit Snake, just give me a minute and wait for me." He said in a shell-shocked manner.

"_Naruto."_ Snake said, recognizing how lost his voice sounded. He hadn't heard the young man speak that way since they first ran across each other, _"What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong with you? Is it about Gray Fox?"_

"I'll tell you when I see you." Naruto said in the same manner that he had spoken in previously, "Don't move, I'll find you guys myself." With that he ended the call and moved like a ghost back to the elevator, thinking to himself intensely as he rode to the correct floor, 'I need to talk to the ninja-, I mean Grey Fox again. If it's true that he was there with me with Dr. Clark then did he see me when I broke out? Does he know about the Kyuubi? If he doesn't then what does he know? Does he know who took us?'

He didn't know how long he had been investigating what had happened to him. Now he was hearing that Liquid and Ocelot knew about it from what Sniper Wolf told him earlier and that there had been someone else in that lab with him which he was hearing about now.

In the corner of the elevator something moved, and Naruto felt it as he immediately pointed his pistol at whatever it was' head, "More stealth camouflage huh?" He growled out. All of his thoughts were catching up to him and making him a little angry if he were to be honest with himself. And to have someone eavesdropping on his thoughts kind of pissed him off to say the least, "Turn the camouflage off or I'll turn it off with your brains on the wall."

A shimmer of electricity led to the cloaking device revealing Dr. Hal Emmerich shaking in his boots with a gun pointed in his face. Naruto should have known that it wasn't the cyborg ninja or Grey Fox… hell he didn't know what to call the damn thing now, if it had been then he wouldn't have found it until it was already attacking him if it didn't kill him first, "Don't kill me!" He cried.

He shouted that line, forcing Naruto to cringe. For a guy that was walking around using stealth camouflage he really didn't know how to conceal anything other than his appearance because the elevator door had just opened when he shouted that into the hall, and in typical devil's luck fashion not only did the yell itself sound off from its point of origin, it echoed out into the halls.

And almost immediately Naruto could hear the heavy boots of the Genome Soldiers rushing to the scene to investigate, "Fuck." Naruto put up his SOCOM and pulled his MP5K out as he grabbed Emmerich shoved him down the hall, walking backwards in case a Genome Soldier turned a corner ready to fire first and capture second, "Turn your stealth camouflage back on and stay down low!" Naruto ordered the scientist.

Doing as Naruto asked, and being repeatedly pushed down the hall by the young soldier, Emmerich stuttered out his next question, "Y-You're not going to take me to Liquid or any of FOXHOUND right?"

"Why would my gun be out if I was on their side?" Naruto asked him in response, taking aim and firing at a trio of soldiers that came turning the corner the way he figured that they would. He took down one, hit another with a glancing wound and missed the last one, but he had forced them to back off. They would probably call for more now. Hopefully he shot fast enough that they didn't get a good look at him, "Just go somewhere and hide. And don't move until you think it's safe, my frequency is 141.92 if you need to call me for something. Now get out of here."

Emmerich didn't get to say another word as Naruto shoved him away and attracted attention by randomly shooting so that they knew he was alone and was the target.

Naruto wound up backing towards a corner leading down another corridor and looked down it to see several more troops coming. So they did call for backup. That was just great. And from the helmets, bulky clothing, and heavy vests they were the heavy troops to boot.

Naruto turned tail and fell back to avoid a shotgun blast from a heavy trooper at the corner he was standing at and took off running. Being caught from two directions in an open hallway crossfire would be nearly impossible for even him to walk away from. Until then he needed to use that speed and evasiveness that he was proud of to get himself somewhere where he could shore up a counterattack.

He created three Kage Bunshin and had them stay low and back up while facing down the hall against the advancing soldiers, with the command to keep backing up and firing at the Genome Soldiers to slow them down. As he got further and further away he could tell that the plan was working as the gunfire got more and more distant. He would have to dispel the clones soon or else risk one of them getting shot and him taking some phantom damage. No need to do so when he didn't have to.

As he ran to find himself a place that was easy to defend to take on the heavy troops he saw a redhead peek her head out of the women's bathroom due to the commotion and spot him, "Naruto!"

"No time, run." Naruto replied swiftly as he flew past the bathrooms soon followed by Meryl and Snake who had been in there with her. He would have to ask why at a later point, but right now he had to find somewhere good to set up a defensive perimeter, "Where were you two going?"

Meryl answered him, "The commander's room down the hall from the lobby."

The lobby was the perfect place to set a trap. And Naruto could see such with the location in question coming up quickly. Snake finally wondered why Naruto had them running not even five seconds after locating them, "Kid what's going on? What were you running from?"

"Short version?" Naruto asked as he pointed them down the hall from the lobby that led towards the commander's room, "The scientist Hal Emmerich totally blew my cover by freaking out when I caught him with his stealth camo, I had to lead these guys away from him since he can't fight. And there are way more than I thought there would be." At last check before he dismissed his clones they were able to take down four, but even more took their place putting the last count that they had seen at fifteen; ten regular, five heavy ordinance.

"Otacon…" Snake growled. After he saved Emmerich in the lab from Grey Fox the man told him that he'd be staying out of the way. He didn't figure staying out of the way being hiding someplace where Naruto would find him within twenty minutes of the two splitting up, "So now what?"

Naruto started kicking tables over in the middle of the lobby to set himself up somewhere to grab some cover from, "I'm going to beat these idiots while you two go on ahead. Go do whatever you need to get to the commander's room for. I'll finish all of these guys."

Snake didn't know exactly what the odds were the way that Naruto did, but he could hear chatter and lots of footsteps coming their way. Judging by how hard Naruto was working to set himself up a spot to fight from he knew, and they didn't necessarily look good, "Are you sure?"

"Do you really feel like getting stuck in a firefight right now when I'm telling you to leave?" Naruto replied, finished setting up all of the lobby tables and thick couches he could to keep himself as safe as possible in what was about to occur. He pointed towards the doorway that led to the corridor that would take them to the commander's room behind him and his defensive barrier, "I wouldn't tell you to go if I didn't think I could win this. Now go so I can finish getting ready." He said as he hopped behind his cover and sent his clones to finish setting things up.

Snake stared at Naruto as he sat with his MP5K at the ready over his makeshift barrier but he soon went down the hall with Meryl where he started hearing some strange music the further down he went. He didn't notice Meryl beginning to act strangely, holding her head as she went further due to him turning around once more to peer back at Naruto who looked ready to fight. Confident that Naruto would last and catch up, Snake turned around to move ahead, just in time for Meryl to get up to move and act in monotone, "What's the matter?" He asked.

"Nothing." Meryl replied as she led him down the hall at a reserved pace before making it to the door at the end, "Come on Mr. FOXHOUND, the commander is waiting." She said almost in a trance-like manner as she opened the door and walked in first. Snake followed as it shut behind him.

XxX

(With Naruto)

The lobby was set up with one back hall towards the commander's room, a lobby pit where Naruto was holed up with his cover, and two side hallways at the top of the room that would force the enemy to turn a corner in order to see and take aim at them. With his luck there would be an attack from both halls which was why he had his clones set up duel traps with a bouquet of grenades hanging out of sight just at the front of each corner, able to be triggered by metal wire that he had with him behind his cover. In the lobby as well were two side rooms further in closer to Naruto where he had two clones sitting and waiting ready to fight and assist the original.

'Okay, let's do this…' Naruto thought to himself sitting with his finger on the trigger. He absently thought about Dr. Emmerich and hoped he had gotten himself out of dodge or at least somewhere safe… but then again this was his fault in the first place, if he hadn't then it wasn't really Naruto's problem anymore.

The first four soldiers came around the left corner, each apparently knowing that Naruto and his clones had cover because they fired right on them, narrowly missing them. Naruto yanked on one of his two set traps, pulling the pins from one of the grenade bouquets and letting it fall to the ground by the Genome Soldiers. The delay of the grenades was not nearly enough time for them to escape as they were caught full-on by the explosion.

Seeing four of their comrades die without even a chance, the Genome Soldiers from the right corner tossed a flashbang grenade into the lobby, Naruto hit the deck behind his cover and held his ears as the disorienting blast went off. One of Naruto's unlucky clones had the grenade explode right at its feet, thus it took the full brunt of the blast and then found itself filled with holes before dispelling after taking the gunshots.

Feeling his clone take the hits and die stuck with Naruto, however he was still able to tug on his other bouquet of grenades while his remaining mostly unaffected clone laid down fire to keep the heavy troops from storming the lobby and finishing them both off. Once again the grenade bouquet went unseen by the six troops that were being pinned down by Naruto's clone until the small explosive orbs rattled over the ground.

It didn't matter what kind of armor the heavy troops mixed in with the normal soldiers had on when they went off, the grenades blew them apart.

Two traps wound up taking down twelve men, but the original Naruto who had gotten over his dispelled clone's injuries knew that he wasn't done yet. He initially counted out fifteen by way of his clones but that was before they started coming from both sides; he knew that there were more than that now. Wordless communication to his clone prompted it to come over to where he was behind cover, but before the replication could make it over to its creator a savage burst of FAMAS fire came around the corner from five more Genome Soldiers deciding to hedge their bets and try moving in.

Naruto was able to dispel his clone before it took any hits that would have softened him up and returned fire that managed to catch three of them and shoot them down since they hadn't been aiming at him, just his clone. The other two made it behind a ledge for cover and returned fire back at Naruto getting him to duck down again, he needed to reload his MP5K anyway as his magazine was empty.

Once the cover from the enemy was put down, two more Genome Soldiers came from their places in the halls and threw a grenade over at Naruto's encampment, landing right near his makeshift cover and exploding, blowing Naruto's little amount of protection to bits and cutting some of Naruto's face with shrapnel and wood from the table. An angry Naruto threw his MP5K over his back and stood up, grabbing a throwing knife from the sleeve on his left arm to throw at an enemy, hitting him in the neck and dropping him as he hoped that it was the one that had thrown the grenade.

He ran on the far side of the lobby, flinging out more knives now that all of the heavy troops were dealt with, the Genome Soldiers ducking out of the way to avoid the fate of their comrade. The two behind the ledge were unable to see over it due to having to duck to avoid being hit by anything, this allowed Naruto to jump clear over it and put one of their lights out permanently with a Rasengan directly to the back of the head and neck that left a small crater under the point of impact. If he wasn't dead which would have been a miracle in itself then he was officially paralyzed.

He saw the other that was still ducking down reaching to swing his FAMAS up at him to kill him and a quick grab of his SOCOM pistol ended up with Naruto putting five rounds into the grounded soldier.

There was still the last soldier that had been with the one that had thrown the grenade, and he wasn't about to let Naruto finish him off too just because the brat was fast. If he was so fast then it was time to see how well he dodged bullets.

Naruto turned to fire on the last soldier, however he already had Naruto beaded, thus when the young blonde turned around he wound up taking ten shots of automatic fire from the enemy's assault rifle. Four of the shots missed while six hit, four were caught in the enhanced vest, two got through.

Stumbling back after getting hit, Naruto emptied the rest of his clip ruthlessly across the lobby, piercing the Genome Soldier's skull with one of the shots, blood flying from a hole in his balaclava and head as he spun and dropped to the floor.

Naruto kept backing up and eventually bumped into a wall, breathing heavily as he started to move down the hall towards the men's bathroom for a short reprieve. He already had a kunai in his hand ready to dig the bullets out once he got himself situated, "I hate guns…" He grunted to himself as he slid inside of the bathroom.

XxX

(With Snake – Commander's Room – Nuclear Warhead Storage Building)

Psycho Mantis had attempted to take control of Meryl to gain an advantage over Snake but even with her as a mental hostage Snake was able to overcome and mortally wound the psychic soldier after a prolonged battle that ruined the majority of the office.

His inability to fight any longer gave way to Snake crouching down and taking the gas mask off of the man, revealing his scars to a disgusted Meryl as he spoke his final words, "I never agreed with the Boss's revolution. His dreams of conquest did not interest me… I just wanted an excuse to do what I wanted and to kill as many people as I could."

"You monster…" Meryl growled. He had done all of this just because of a desire to kill? What kind of shit excuse was that? She just couldn't comprehend a rational being making that thought.

Snake raised a hand to indicate her to calm down, "Let him talk." He had heard people say things like this before. He was no stranger to it, "He doesn't have much time left." He usually also heard it after he wounded someone too gravely for them to survive.

"I've seen true evil…" Mantis recited, shivering at the recollection of what he had seen in Naruto's mind during the boy's escape, "You're just like the Boss, just like Liquid. No, actually you're worse." He let out a soft chuckle, "Compared to you I'm not so bad. Especially compared to… _him._"

"Who?" Snake questioned the dying man.

"Naruto Uzumaki." Mantis said, "I felt his presence nearby before you two came here. I was grateful when he turned around to fight the platoon outside. There is a lot of darkness inside of him. More than in me, maybe more than what is in you or the Boss. He loves combat, if there was no battle to fight he wouldn't know what to do with himself. He is truly a seed baptized in warfare. He's a monster, believe me I've seen it. His mind is twisted and dangerous."

"There's nothing wrong with him." Meryl insisted in Naruto's defense. She had never seen him kill in cold blood. He had never killed anyone needlessly, he always fought simply just to move along. She wasn't unnerved by either him or Snake, so where did Mantis get off on calling them monsters? There wasn't anything dangerous about Naruto at all when you weren't shooting at him.

Mantis let out a few ragged laughs at what he perceived to be Meryl's naivety, "Just because Naruto managed to find a way into your heart doesn't mean that what I said isn't true. All that it means is that you've got a soft spot for a killer. Good luck with that." He smirked at the angry look on her face, "I've already read your mind. A fast friend for the kid it seems." He then looked at Snake, "You had better kill the boy yourself Snake… it would be merciful compared to the life he will wind up living later on."

"I think I'll pass." Snake said dryly with a glare.

"Do you hear the silence outside?" Mantis asked with a cough, "Do you think it would be that quiet if he had been killed or captured? This room would be filled with soldiers if he had. That means that he killed them all by himself. But you'll see that for yourself if you go back out that way. I have one last request for you..."

Snake nodded as he could see Mantis's eyes flicker, "What is it?"

"Put my mask back on." Mantis asked, getting his request granted by Snake, "With the mask off other people's thoughts force their way into my mind. Before I die I want to be by myself, left alone in my own world." As the mask was hooked onto his face, his labored breathing became more prominent, "I'll open the way to the communication towers for you." He said, using his psychic powers to move a large bookcase against the wall to reveal a passageway, "If you want to find your future, go through that door."

Snake stood up from his crouch and holstered his pistol that had been his primary weapon in the heated battle that had preceded the conversation and looked at Meryl before Mantis spoke again, "This is the first time I've ever used my powers to help someone. It's very strange… It feels… kind of… nice." Mantis said before letting go of one last breath and dying.

So that was one of FOXHOUND down, and the way that the office looked after the battle Psycho Mantis did not die easily. But they had to keep moving, "Come on Meryl, let's keep going."

Said girl simply stared down at the deceased Mantis, "I'm sorry." She said, getting Snake to stop in his tracks, "How could I let Mantis control my mind like that?" Snake fought him off and apparently Naruto had too. She on the other hand nearly wound up killing Snake because she couldn't.

"If you're going to doubt yourself I'll leave you here." Snake said tersely. Now wasn't the time for her to be getting shaken up. Yes, things had been bad for a moment, but it was over now. They still had work to do, "Never doubt yourself, just let it make you stronger. Learn something from it."

A stiff nod came from Meryl before she spoke up again, "Snake can I ask you something? About what Mantis said? I was just wondering-."

"What? What's the problem now?" He asked as he pulled his pistol and reloaded it just in case something else lay ahead.

"No… it's nothing." Meryl relented on asking him anything personal once she saw how serious he was, "What's your name? Your real name?"

"A name means nothing on the battlefield."

"How old are you?"

"Old enough to know what death looks like."

"Any family?"

"No, but I was raised by many people."

"Is there anyone you like?"

"I've never been interested in other people's lives."

No matter what question she asked him he never seemed to answer with a direct answer. He was clearly uncomfortable with the train of questioning coming from the young woman, "So you really are alone, just like Mantis said."

"Other people just complicate my life." Snake explained, "I don't like to get involved."

'You're a sad, lonely man Snake…' Meryl thought to herself before a distant set of gunshots rang out from back towards the lobby, "What was that?"

"The kid…" Snake said with a growl before they both went running back towards where Naruto had been before.

XxX

A dragging trail of blood from the lobby itself led to the men's bathroom that Meryl and Snake followed inside only to find Naruto sitting on the floor against the far wall pointing his pistol in their direction. The trail of blood stopped right by where they were standing as a wounded Genome Soldier crawled into the bathroom in an attempt to finish Naruto off, unfortunately for him the opposite happened.

Naruto's vest was off and at his side on the floor while his shirt was pulled up over his chest, two wounds in his chest with bullets and a kunai on the floor nearby, "I'm fine." He said, speaking of his own condition before nodding his head towards the door, "You should see the other guys." He muttered as he slid back to his feet with his back against the wall, "…Seriously, you should have seen them, there were like twenty of them."

They had run to the bathroom so quickly they hadn't really taken the time to look at Naruto's chosen place of battle and when they had they saw that Naruto had made an even bigger mess of the lobby than Mantis had made of the commander's room. Snake let out a low whistle, "You really don't mess around do you?" The bodies littering the floor were evidence of that.

"You're a wreck." Meryl told Naruto as he pulled his shirt back down and picked his vest up to put back on, "You aren't even going to disinfect or bandage that?"

Naruto let off an unintelligible grunt, she didn't know that he his bleeding had already stopped. All that was left now was for the wound to close up, "It'll have to do for now unless you want me to turn around and raid the medic bay just for that stuff. I don't even need it that bad. I just need to take a little time and rest." He noticed the worried look on Meryl's face when he was about to put the vest back on. The front of his shirt was covered in blood, "Please… me and my clones get shot so much they might as well be bee stings by now. Deadly, deadly, bee stings… shaped like death."

Meryl put her hands on her hips and walked up to the stubborn blonde teenager, "What do you think you're some kind of walking weapon or something?"

Naruto grinned at her sheepishly, "Well when you put it that way I technically-." He heard her groan indignantly and a frown crossed his whisker-marked face, "Hey, this is nothing alright. It's annoying at worst. Just believe in me alright? No one ever does and I'm kind of getting tired of it. Only two people ever really believed in me ever since I became a soldier; Master Miller and Catherine."

"Master Miller?" Snake repeated as if he didn't believe Naruto, "FOXHOUND's old drill sergeant?"

A smile crossed Naruto's face as he went over to sit himself down on the sink for a moment, the bullets were gone but they hurt like hell before and during the time he took to dig them out, "Yeah, Master Miller, the same guy that trained with you a bit. I told you I've heard all about you Snake. He trained me too."

"Do you want to talk to him?" Snake's question got a confused tilt of the head from Naruto that Meryl had to laugh at. For some reason the look suited him, "He's on my support team for this mission, I could give you his frequency to talk."

"Really?" Naruto's face lit up at the prospect. He hadn't even talked to Miller in forever. Even if now wasn't the time for catching up Naruto really didn't care. If he died here on Shadow Moses Island then at least he wanted to be able to say goodbye first if it came to that, "That's awesome! Yeah of course I want to talk to him!"

Snake couldn't help but smile, even if he _was_ a killer, which the scene outside most certainly attested to, he obviously kept something good inside to keep himself from going mad with guilt or having nightmares about what he had done the way Snake had them. He seemed to be very close to Miller from his reaction towards just talking to the man, "His frequency is 141.80."

By the time Snake had finished talking Naruto had already programmed the frequency into his Codec. He made to get up off of the sink but moving too suddenly apparently aggravated his wounds as he could feel himself bleeding again, "Damn, I still need time?" Maybe he should have invested some time in getting some medical supplies?

"Of course you still need time." Meryl said in a voice that he hadn't heard in quite a while, someone chiding him over his lack of care about his personal well-being. That was new. The last person to actually care whether or not he had hurt himself was Catherine and that was years ago, "You can't just get up and walk away after getting shot in the chest." Yeah, this girl definitely didn't know the first thing about what he was made of if she was saying that, "Just sit here for a bit and rest. You're not going to just keel over and die because of a nagging injury."

He wasn't going to keel over and die anyway, still he didn't think telling her that nothing short of a surefire killing blow would put him down was much of a good idea. Maybe taking a bit of a break wasn't such a bad idea, "Fine. I'll stay here for a few minutes, but I'll be back out and moving again in no time. I'm not even close to being dead yet." Naruto grumbled, getting a smile out of Meryl for actually being agreeable.

"No one ever said that you were kid." Snake replied before motioning to Meryl to go, "Come on, we're still wasting time. The kid's fine, let's get to the communication towers." He said as he walked out of the bathroom and prepared to keep going on forward.

Meryl prepared to leave as well but not before giving one last look at Naruto who merely blinked in confusion as to why she hadn't left yet, "What's the matter? Do you need something from me?" Naruto asked, trying to figure what was wrong.

"No, nothing." Meryl said, shaking her head before beginning to back out of the bathroom, "Just don't go and get yourself killed alright?"

Naruto let out a fake-offended scoff as he smirked, "They don't have enough firepower here to kill me. You just go and make sure you take care of yourself. I don't want to have to go and save you twice." He joked, shooing her away, "Go on, I told you I'll be fine. I don't need anyone to watch over me when there's still a job to do."

"As long as you're sure…" She said before leaving altogether to follow Snake.

Taking a moment to catch his breath and make sure that they left to continue on ahead, Naruto decided to make the most of his forced downtime as he quickly called the channel for Master Miller. He couldn't wait, and then was as good a time as any to do so. Naruto put his hand to his ear with a massive grin on his face, "Master Miller?"

"_Yes?"_

"Oh, I'm hurt. It hasn't been that long since the last time you heard my voice has it?" Naruto said in a joking manner. If he had a tail it probably would have been wagging at this point, "It's Naruto. It's been forever!"

There was silence over the line for a few seconds before an exuberant voice answered, _"Oh, Naruto! I heard that you were caught up in this whole mess at Shadow Moses. Tell me how you are. Is everything okay? Where are you?"_

"Yeah…" Naruto replied with a sigh. It was good to hear the man's voice again, it was oddly comforting. He was one of the few people in the world that he had unconditional trust in, it took him a while to realize that, "I did, but I'm not dead yet. I had a close call with Sniper Wolf shooting at me and with the Cyborg Ninja trying to take my head off, but I'm not dead yet. I just got through with a huge shootout but I'm fine for the most part."

"_How did you survive being shot at by Sniper Wolf? Anyone that knows her knows that she never misses."_

"She didn't miss." Naruto replied plainly, "She just hit the wrong me. Those Kage Bunshin of mine come in real handy from time to time." Naruto shifted himself in place carefully so as not to reopen the wound before it healed to satisfaction lest he start the whole process over again, "So what's been going on with you? I haven't talked to you in almost six months, you told me to spend most of my calls on Catherine."

"_Oh, just the same as always, you know how it is."_ Miller answered nonchalantly, _"Tell me what you're going to do now. Where are you currently?"_

"I'm resting." Naruto said. He didn't need to tell the man that he had gotten shot, he didn't feel like getting bitched out right after talking to the man for the first time in months, but it was weird. Why did it matter where he was? There wasn't anything Miller could do to help him out or advise him. Naruto himself knew most of the base better than anyone ever would. There wasn't anything that Miller could say that would be useful to him, "I don't want to talk about any of this right now though Master… just tell me something to take my mind off of the fighting for a minute. Tell me something about Catherine. How is she?"

Once again there was silence over the line, this time for a longer lapse than the first time until Miller's voice spoke up, _"She's just fine. She wishes you would come home though, you haven't been here in a while. It's been making her kind of antsy."_

A smile came to Naruto's face, "Well I think that after I get out of this I'll have plenty of time to go home. I need to get back into the fight… I can't stop now, I need to beat Liquid and end all of this. If I don't make it back then I want you to tell her I'm sorry, I couldn't keep my promise after all, but I did my best."

"_I'm sure your girlfriend is fine with you not making it back Naruto, even if she doesn't know the reason why."_

Naruto's eyes widened as he responded tersely, "Kitty's not my girlfriend Master. She's still in high school, come on! Besides, if I felt that way about her and you knew it then you'd probably try to kill me! That's your daughter! Gah, that was so creepy to hear you say out loud!" The last time he had seen her though she had been really pretty. It had been over a year since then so she could only have grown up more-, 'What the hell am I thinking about? She's like my little sister!'

At that point at his outburst the transmission ended which was good for Naruto because he didn't know what to think anymore. Maybe talking about something other than the mission was actually a bad idea? Now he had to get his mind off of something completely different so that he could be effective on the battlefield again. Oh well, if he couldn't get Catherine off of the brain then he would by the time people started shooting at him. That always worked to get his attention.

What the hell was Miller's problem teasing him like that? There was a time and a place for everything and this certainly wasn't the time for something like that. But then again it didn't really sound like he had been teasing him at all. It sounded like he had been making an actual statement, there wasn't any humor in his voice at all when he called Catherine his girlfriend.

That either meant that Catherine really felt that way and told Miller, which was unlikely since that wouldn't have served her any positive purpose at all, or he really thought that Catherine had been his girlfriend… which was asinine because that wasn't a mistake that he could make. Naruto was barely ever home, Catherine was only there for holidays since she moved in with her mother to go to high school, he would know if something like that was up between them if they were there at the same time.

Naruto put his hand back to his ear and put out the signal to call again, _"Yes? What is it now Naruto?"_

For reasons known to him only, Naruto had a hard look in his eyes before he opened his mouth to speak, "So Master, where is Catherine right now?" He tried to keep his tone light and inquisitive despite the fact that he was quite possibly on the verge of snapping if what he thought was true had actually happened.

"_Where else would she be? She's at home. Use your head boy."_ Miller stated as if it were obvious.

"And where would home be in this case?" Naruto replied, sounding ignorant, though he was pacing back and forth in the bathroom, his wounds all but forgotten. It wasn't as if he cared about a few baby scratches in his chest at this point anyway.

"_Here with me in Alaska, where else?"_

Naruto didn't verbally respond, he just turned his Codec off and stood in place in the bathroom, looking at himself in one of the mirrors right by the sink. He didn't know how long he had stood there for until he finally yelled in anger and punched the mirror with his taped fist, shattering it on contact. Catherine wasn't in Alaska, there was no way she was in Alaska. It was February, she was in Los Angeles with her mother. She hadn't been in Alaska since December.

Taking a second to splash some water on his face before going back to his Codec, Naruto was about to call Snake before he remembered that Snake had said that Miller was a part of his support team. With this in mind Naruto called the member of Snake's support team that he had already spoken to.

"_Naruto?"_ Naomi's voice said through his communication device in surprise, _"Why are you calling? I got the feeling from the last conversation you had with Colonel Campbell that we weren't exactly your favorite people in the world right now."_

"I don't care about that right now." Naruto replied, once again pacing around the bathroom while speaking on his Codec, "I need to talk to that Campbell guy. He's Snake's commanding officer on this mission right?"

"_There's something very important going on right now Naruto."_ Naomi tried to explain. She could identify the anger in his voice even without having to see his face,_ "It will have to wait for a while I'm afraid. Things aren't going very well."_

"What?" Naruto replied incredulously, "What in the hell could possibly be the matter that you can't give the old guy the message to talk? _This_ is important too."

XxX

(With Snake – Tank Hangar B2 – Medical Room)

On the way to the communication towers Meryl and Snake were ambushed by Sniper Wolf who had taken up a vantage point by the towers. The female sniper managed to wound Meryl by taking out her legs and arms with shots in an effort to provoke Snake to fight back. Without a sniper rifle there wasn't anything he could do however, and he was forced to leave Meryl to retrieve one and return to fight. It could have been avoided however if he had seen that Naruto had one with him on the floor of the bathroom, but he hadn't paid much attention to Naruto other than his wounds.

By the time he had procured one and returned to 'defeat' Sniper Wolf, Meryl had been taken away to be a prisoner, and Wolf faked her defeat to lure Snake into a situation to be knocked out and captured.

Which is where he sat now, strapped to an electronic torture device as he woke up face-to-face with a fair-haired version of himself smirking at him victoriously, "There definitely is a resemblance don't you think little brother?" Liquid said to the immobile Snake in a taunting fashion, "Or should I say big brother? I'm not really sure, anyway it doesn't matter."

'So this is Liquid.' Snake said as the blonde lookalike of himself turned around and started pacing slowly, 'I can see why the kid wants to kick his ass so much. A few sentences and I want to mash his face myself.'

"You and I are the last surviving sons of Big Boss." Liquid said to Snake before his radio went off, prompting him to answer it, "It's me." He said before listening for a moment, "Really? Then what?" He asked before listening again and letting out a grunt of anger, "Those idiots!" He turned to face Snake and glare at him as he continued to speak into his radio, "Alright Raven I'll be right there." He let out a sigh and addressed Ocelot and Wolf who were still in the room, "They're not responding to our demands. We'll launch the first one in ten hours as planned."

Sniper Wolf shook her head at their target country and their idiocy, "Damn Americans…"

Ocelot smirked and spoke up in an amused voice, "Looks like you read them wrong."

"Something's strange." Liquid said, "Normally the Americans are the first ones to the negotiating table. They must think they've got something up their sleeves." He said, sending another pointed look at Snake. Snake didn't know why he was looking at him like that, he was strapped to the damn table, what could he have done?

"So it's come down to this has it?" Ocelot said as he kept his hand-less arm, now with bloody bandages around the stump cradled to his chest, "We're going to launch that nuke and ride it all the way into history."

Liquid nodded before he began to walk off, "I've got to take care of some launch preparations. You're in charge here Ocelot."

Ocelot looked over at Wolf, still with a smirk on his face, "What about you?" He asked, "Want to stay for the show?"

"I'm not interested." She replied before popping some of her muscle relaxants, "It's time to feed the family." She said in reference to the wolf dogs.

"You prefer your wolves to my show huh?" Ocelot asked rhetorically. He knew his area of expertise rubbed quite a few people the wrong way but he couldn't possibly care any less about what they thought.

In reference to his torture, Liquid stopped before he completely left the room and pointed at Ocelot with a serious tone in his voice, "Ocelot don't screw up like you did with the DARPA Chief. We don't need any more of that."

"Yes, yes, I know." Ocelot said as if he were a teenager getting lectured by his parents, "That was an accident. I didn't think a pencil pusher like him would be so tough."

Liquid frowned visibly, "Well his mental defenses were reinforced by hypnotherapy."

"And what about the ninja?" Ocelot asked, "He's killed at least 12 men."

"Whoever he is, he's some kind of lunatic." Liquid claimed in reference to the Cyborg Ninja.

Ocelot glared down at his stump of what was once his right hand, "Bastard took my hand. How could he have gotten in here?"

"We must have a spy among us." Liquid speculated as to why things were going so bad so quickly, "Maybe that or the Uzumaki brat has friends in higher places than we thought. Either way Mantis is dead and we still don't know what killed Baker and Decoy Octopus. We're shorthanded and the runt is running roughshod all over the base as we speak, so keep this little torture show as short as possible."

"Torture?" Ocelot said, sounding offended at the accusation, "This is interrogation."

"As you wish." Liquid dismissed bitingly before turning to give one last glare to Snake, "See you later brother."

Wolf watched the FOXHOUND commander leave before turning to Snake, "That woman of yours is still in this world." She informed him, putting on a satisfied smirk when she heard him growl at her in anger, "Catch you later handsome." She said as she too left the room.

"You're lucky she doesn't seem that particularly interested in you." Ocelot told Snake as Wolf left, "Once she picks a target she doesn't think about anything else. Sometimes she even falls in love with them before she kills them. But don't worry your head about your own safety, she's had a target in mind for a little over a year now. The thing about it is though, I thought she had gotten him already, but now we find out that had gotten away. Damn brat is like a cockroach, I knew he'd either be a major help or a major headache."

'There's only one person in FOXHOUND that could have been called a brat…' Snake thought as the prospect of Naruto still being free to move and fight flew through his mind. As long as he could stay out of trouble things would have a chance at still succeeding.

"Let's get started." Ocelot said as he started to adjust certain things on the bed by way of a computer, "How are you feeling?"

"Not bad." Snake replied dryly, "I caught a nice little nap on this revolving bed of yours. Too bad I was sleeping alone though." Yeah, so getting into a contest of wisecracks with the guy about to torture you wasn't such a good idea. So what? No matter what it was going to suck, why not make himself feel good by getting a few verbal shots in first?

XxX

(With Naruto – Nuclear Warhead Storage Building B1 – Lobby Bathroom)

Naruto was now sitting in a stall on a closed toilet, "So Snake got himself caught by Sniper Wolf and Meryl got shot?" He said, summarizing what he had been told from Campbell over the Codec.

"_That's right."_ He said with no small amount of trepidation in his voice disguised as a biting tone, _"And where were you when all of this was happening?"_

"Digging two bullets out of my chest with a knife and bleeding out on a bathroom floor asshole." Naruto replied, not really rising to the old man's attitude problem, he had his own problems to deal with at the moment which was the entire reason that he called, "Look, do you have any people stationed at Master Miller's house?"

"_No."_ Campbell replied, _"He was too far inland for us to get soldiers to fast enough to start this mission. Good thing we could reach him by radio for assistance. Why?"_

"You might need to send someone there." Naruto told him, tapping his foot on the floor nervously, "There's something really, really wrong. That Master Miller isn't real. I swear it. There was too much off about him."

A sigh came over the line before Campbell spoke up again, _"Master Miller said you were something of a loose cannon. Whose side are you on Uzumaki?"_

"I'm on my own goddamn side!" Naruto snapped irritably, kicking the shut stall door off of the hinges, "Which right now doesn't look like it's yours!" That sealed it. That definitely wasn't Master Miller, he would have never said anything like that to Campbell, he did all he could to talk Naruto up all the way until he wound up even joining FOXHOUND, "Go send someone to Master's house and check it out! If you do then I'll get Snake out." He tried to bargain. There was nothing he could do stuck inside the heart of Shadow Moses.

"_Snake doesn't need your help to escape."_ Campbell insisted, getting Naruto to bite his fist to block growling into the Codec. Fine, it was time to go low if that was how he wanted to play this game.

"I guess Meryl doesn't either then." Naruto said off-handedly before speaking sarcastically, "I mean if she was shot in the arms and legs then that gives her plenty of ways to escape doesn't it? Nah she doesn't need me at all." He stopped talking and listened to the silence over the line, "Hello? Am I talking to my own thoughts now or what?"

Still silence.

"You know Revolver Ocelot doesn't really play nice, even with women." Naruto commented. It was only a matter of time now, he just needed to push a little harder. He always had a gift for running his mouth, it was time for it to come in handy for more than getting people to shoot at him, "He told me that he actually likes listening to the screams of women more than men when he tortures them, something he picked up from his days in GRU he said. Sick bastard."

"_Alright."_ The sound of the colonel relenting and choosing to adhere to Naruto's request was like music to Naruto's ears, _"I'll inquire about Master Miller. I'll get some soldiers sent to his home to check up on him personally."_

Naruto nodded to himself, satisfied with basically extorting the girl's safety for a favor. He could tell from their last conversation that the girl was important to Campbell, and even though he didn't like it people never did things in this world out of the goodness of their hearts so why should he have to all the time? He was probably going to go save her anyway if the man had said yes or not… but he didn't know that.

"_Get Meryl and Snake and I'll get Miller checked up on in person."_

"Don't tell him you're coming." Naruto added on as an afterthought, "Don't radio him and tell him a damn thing, just send soldiers to show up." The young blonde ordered, "You set that up and I'll have Meryl and Snake out in no time. I promise."

"_Are you certain you can get them both?"_

"Absolutely." Naruto replied with full confidence, "I never go back on my word. If you help me I'll help you."

"_I'll send out the order now."_ Colonel Campbell said with finality, _"When word is received you'll be the first to know."_ He finished before shutting the transmission off.

"Good." Naruto said to himself before forming a Rasengan in both hands and slamming them into the stalls on both sides of them, turning them into wrecks of twisted metal before standing up and cracking his neck.

He already knew where Snake was. Ocelot's favorite machine for torture had been set up just days after they had arrived at the base and he knew it hadn't been moved. There had better not have been a single Genome Soldier stupid enough to get in his way. He was done fucking around with them and FOXHOUND.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter done. I would say that there are two more chapters of Shadow Moses left if I had to estimate, but then again I thought I would have started one of the main fights of this arc by now as well. Not enough space so it will be saved for next time folks, probably with another as well if I'm right about the chapter amount.<strong>

**Anyway, later days folks… I've got to go to work.**

**Kenchi out.**


	9. The Ace in the Hole

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. My birthday was June 18th… so someone get on that and hook me up with one or the other. Come on, I'm not picky, I'll take either or in this case. Man getting older sucks. I wish I was 5 but still had my 20 year old mindset, that'd be fucking stupendous.

**Chapter 9: The Ace in the Hole**

* * *

><p>(With Snake – Tank Hangar B1 – Medical Room)<p>

Snake was never one for all of the technological aspects of his job. He was more of a simple nuts and bolts kind of guy, not really into the high-tech aspect that seemed to be sweeping the entire world over the last fifteen years. Still, after his little torture session on Ocelot's little electric bed he had to say…

Yeah, he still wasn't much for technology.

After dealing with getting electrocuted repeatedly for only God knew how long because he sure as hell wasn't counting himself, Snake found himself thrown into a nearby patient room with windows on three sides of it to recover for his next session with Ocelot's favorite body of work.

Like hell he was going to sit there and just let his ass get shocked again.

Still, he didn't have any of his gear, and he was all kinds of tired after what he had just dealt with. As he sat on the bed in the room, Snake looked over in a corner by the door to see a body sitting there, "Looks like I've got a roommate." Snake quipped dryly before focusing on who exactly it was, eyes widening at his realization, "The DARPA Chief?"

Snake got up to walk over to the dead body that he thought he had left in the prison cells near the start of his infiltration mission. This body had multiple open wounds on it and had blood all over it. Now this was a body that looked like it had actually been tortured, tortured to death actually, "What a stench…" With his Codec still on him, Snake immediately called up Colonel Campbell to let him know of his current condition.

"_Snake, are you okay?"_ The soldier's commanding officer asked him first and foremost, not letting Snake even begin to speak himself.

"I've been better." Snake replied. He would probably shock himself every time he touched a doorknob for the next six weeks, but other than that he was fine for the time being, "…They've got Meryl."

"_I already knew that Snake."_ Campbell said solemnly, _"It's not your fault. Listen, the government has decided to not give into their demands. We're trying to buy you some more time."_

"Come on Colonel." Snake was getting tired of this whole run-around. He knew something was off from the very start of his mission and things just kept getting weirder and weirder in his view, "Why don't you stop playing dumb? I'm sorry about Meryl but I want the lies to end now." He could hear sounds of confusion on the other line and continued speaking, "Metal Gear was designed to launch a new type of nuclear warhead… and you knew it all along didn't you?" His silence was the only answer Snake needed. Thank goodness for loose-lipped enemies, "Why did you try to hide it? I guess you can't tell the grunts huh?"

"_I'm sorry."_ Yeah he was sorry for a lot of things, things that Snake didn't even know about even if he did know about what was really going on with Metal Gear REX.

"You've changed…" Snake said dolefully, "Metal Gear… secret advanced nuclear weapons research… Does the White House know about all of this? Just how deep does this all go?"

"_As far as I know the President hasn't been briefed about the REX Project."_

"Need to know basis huh? Is that the idea?" He should have just stayed retired… This entire mission was just another episode in his career that he just didn't need. Deep down Snake knew that there was no getting out of it but damn it he at least wanted the option. He at least wanted the respect to not be used as a pawn.

Campbell could tell that Snake was getting more agitated as the conversation went on, but the cat (_this_ cat at least, and honestly things could have been worse) was out of the bag, _"These are sensitive times. Even sub-nuclear tests are causing quite a stir."_

So if the President didn't know then when someone found out about the wrong research he wouldn't be held accountable, "Plausible deniability…"

"_Yes. And tomorrow the President and his Russian counterpart are scheduled to sign the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) III Accord."_

And the discovery of something like REX and the new nuclear warhead would throw that all out of wack, "So that's the reason for the deadline." Snake had to admit that Liquid definitely knew how to pick his spots.

Naomi spoke up to give a new perspective on the talk, _"That's why we can't let this terrorist attack go public."_

"_START II hasn't even been ratified among other things."_ Campbell cut in, _"This has to do with the President's reputation and America's place as the dominant superpower."_

Snake scoffed, "So Patriotism is your bullshit excuse for circumventing the Constitution?"

"_Please Snake… just stop them."_

"Why should I?" Snake wasn't feeling too patriotic these days and he had had more than enough with the amount of things being kept from him. He never even wanted to do this, they had forced him to.

"_Because you're the only one who can."_ Another weak reason to keep going. Without an actual reason to fight then how could he? How could they have expected him to do this with no motivation?

"Then tell me about this new warhead." Snake more or less demanded. He wasn't about to go any further, if he was going to be a pawn he was going to be a well-informed pawn, "I want the truth."

"_I told you before, I don't know the details."_

"You're full of crap… again." Snake growled. Man he wished that he had something to hit right then, "If the situation is so serious then why don't you give in to their demands? Let them have Big Boss's remains. Or is there another reason you can't do that?" He spat distastefully, "Some _other_ reason you haven't told me about."

At this point Naomi spoke up as this was more her area of expertise, _"Publicly the President has been very vocal in his opposition to eugenics experiments. We don't want the existence of the Genome Army going public."_

"That's it?" Snake said in disbelief, almost chuckling at the absurdity of it if he even felt like laughing at this point, "That's the only reason?" Once again when it was clear that the excuses and half-answers weren't satisfactory, Snake heard silence, "Feh, the hell with you!"

"_I'm sorry."_ Campbell once again uttered. He could have at least had some backbone over the whole matter.

"The corpse of the DARPA Chief is right here next to me." Snake finally decided to inform them, "But it's strange… he looks and smells like he's been dead for a while. All his blood's been drained out too."

"_Maybe to slow decomposition?"_ Naomi suggested, though it was a rather morbid thought, _"But Anderson only died a few hours ago right?"_

"Yeah but he's already started to decompose." Snake could most certainly attest to that. The smell was starting to be a killer, "Would there be something in his blood that they wanted?"

"_Just the nanomachines and the transmitter."_ It was almost as if Snake could see Naomi shrug in confusion.

Once again, Snake's least favorite person at the moment, Colonel Campbell, spoke up again, _"Did the Chief give up his detonation code?"_

"Afraid so." Snake answered, "It looks like they've got both codes and are almost ready to launch. I think there's some emergency override device that can cancel out the detonation code. It's a secret ArmsTech installation. You need three special card keys to unlock it. I've only got one though, I don't know where the other two are… and I'm locked up here in case you forgot."

"_Forget the keys!"_ Campbell said abruptly, _"We've got no choice, your top priority now is to destroy Metal Gear itself. I'm sorry to have to lay it all in your lap but you're all I've got. Don't worry too much about escape though. I've got a joker in the deck that I've just found to get you out."_ With that, the transmission ended.

So he was still stuck in this crappy situation and he couldn't back off and leave at this point even if he wanted to. As he looked outside of the locked room he could see one Genome Soldier patrolling about with his FAMAS as he let out a sneeze, "Damn… I caught a cold laying on that floor… that bitch." He was probably referencing Meryl stealing his clothes as there was one soldier in the cell block when Snake first met her stripped of his gear.

He kept sneezing, but he actually seemed to be attentive. Getting knocked out however it happened the first time probably would have done that for him. He needed to get out of there before Ocelot came back for him to torture him again. He didn't know what was worse, getting shocked while strapped to a table or listening to Ocelot rant about all sorts of random things while he did it.

Maybe he would call someone while he was there, maybe Mei Ling or Naomi, because he didn't really feel like talking to Campbell again.

Damn he was bored.

XxX

(With Naruto – Tank Hangar)

Naruto was quietly humming to himself as he strapped an obscene amount of semtex to the bottom of the one remaining tank in the hangar. This would kill two birds with one stone; it would set off one hell of a diversion to get Snake out of Ocelot's torture chamber, and it would make sure that _he_ didn't have to fight a tank the way Snake did in the canyon outside. He could still see a lot of the remnants from that fight. He'd have to ask him how the hell he pulled that off later.

"Hey, Naruto."

Naruto pulled a kunai and stopped it short of stabbing someone in the eye once he heard a rather scared whimper. A shimmer of electricity revealed Hal Emmerich to the young blonde, "*sigh* Don't do that… this is the second time I almost killed you for trying to sneak up on me. Call me first if you're going to start looking for me okay?"

"Sorry." Hal said, feeling rather lucky that he had emptied his bladder back when the Cyborg Ninja almost killed him in his lab or else Naruto would have seen him do it right there, "Here, I got you something you might want." He handed Naruto a top level key card, "Just in case."

"Sweet." Naruto pocketed the valuable card he had wanted for quite some time, "This is just what I needed." Something then came to his mind, "Hey why are you helping me anyway?"

Hal merely adjusted the glasses on his face and gave Naruto a smile, "Well you're helping Snake aren't you? I heard the conversation you guys had in the bathroom after you got hurt in that fight with the Genome Soldiers. Why wouldn't I help if I could? I'm helping him." A frown then crossed the scientist's face, "Too bad I'm so useless otherwise. I can't get him out of his cell downstairs." He had already been down there and all he could do was give him some food.

Naruto pointed up to the undercarriage of the tank they were laying under, "Well that's what all this is for." He then saw the man's face pale when he looked up and saw all of the explosives underneath the tank, "Heh, yeah. I'm going to fuck this place up. You're not going to want to be on this floor when I set this off. You might want to leave the building in a moment Dr. Emmerich."

"I… see." Hal said, adjusting his glasses again to hide his slight fear of the younger yet infinitely more imbalanced blonde man, "But could you call me Otacon instead of Dr. Emmerich? That was what my father and grandfather were called so I'd rather be called something that's my own." He then noticed Naruto's dejected look, "What's the matter?"

"Even you have a codename of your own…" Naruto said with a proverbial storm cloud over his head, "I mean sure you had to come up with it yourself but it kind of fits… And those bastards couldn't even bother naming me before they tried to put a bullet in my head." He dragged a palm across his face to get back to business at hand, "Okay, go on and get out of this building because it's going to be a hornet's nest after I'm done." Otacon turned his stealth camouflage back on as he left from under the tank, "My turn now I guess."

XxX

(With Snake)

If Snake had to watch that guard go to the bathroom because of his stomach virus one more time he was going to break that kid's neck when he got out of there. He'd bet anything that the hallway just outside of his cell smelled like death, maybe even worse than the room he was already in now.

His little talk with Naomi was at least a fantastic way to kill time. At least he was able to get most of what he experienced in Zanzibar Land off of his chest to someone new. He was still stuck though.

At that moment his Codec went off, "Yeah?"

"_What's up Snake?"_ He heard the voice of Naruto, far too bright for the predicament they were both in. He didn't know if he liked that or hated it about the kid, _"Good to hear that Ocelot didn't fuck you up too bad."_

"Where are you?" Snake asked, sitting on his bed. There wasn't really anything he could do with nothing on his person to use, "Can you get me out of here?"

"_Already on it."_ Naruto responded confidently, _"How many guards are around you?"_

"Just one." He was already on it? What did he mean he was already on it? He didn't see any sign of the kid anywhere, "What do you mean 'you're already on it'? What are you about to do?"

"_You'll find out in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, now."_

BOOM

A dull sound of an explosion shook the ceiling above Snake enough to let him know that a rather intense explosion had occurred upstairs, "You didn't."

"_I so did. Now hold on for another second."_

"W-What the hell's going on upstairs?" The guard to Snake's cell asked loudly as he ran from the bathroom pulling his pants up. He ran to the door to leave the medical wing, and just as he opened the door he was grabbed around the neck and choked unconscious by a figure that seemed to have been hovering over the doorway. After the thud of the unconscious guard's body hitting the ground sounded out, Snake heard whistling as Naruto dragged the guard by the collar all the way through the medical wind, dropping him in front of his cell door and grabbing the key from him to open the door.

As the door opened, ridding the separation between the strange young soldier and Snake, he stepped outside of his cell and looked down at the guard that was out cold before looking up at the grinning Naruto, "I know I would rather not ask this question, but what did you do upstairs?"

Naruto shrugged absently, "Nothing, I just blew up the other tank in the hangar. Maybe I used too much C4?" He then pointed at another room over to the side, "All of your crap is in there. I saw it when I was dragging this guy over here." They didn't even take his stuff anywhere, the idiots.

"Thanks." Snake said as he ran to get his stuff, "I'm heading to the communication towers kid, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get Meryl." Naruto informed him before giving Snake a thumbs-up, "Just leave it to me."

A nod from Snake as he left the room told Naruto that he was counting on him to pull it off. Snake was a man of few words to say the very least. Naruto looked down and shook his head at the guard on the floor, he hadn't even pulled his pants all the way back up before Naruto managed to grab him and put him out. Naruto kicked at him to wake him up, taking his FAMAS away from him, "Wake up Johnny!" He shouted to get the man's attention.

The eyes of the balaclava-clad guard snapped open on the ground as he looked up at a familiar whisker-marked face and blue eyes, "B-Boss! What are you doing here?" He sounded fearful of Naruto. He had lucked out when he woke up in the cell block after Naruto knocked him out; he had seen the others that weren't so lucky, he had been one of the few that survived whatever happened there, "A-Are you going to kill me?"

"Nope." Naruto said as if the answer were obvious, "Well, I won't kill you if you're not stupid enough to keep going through with Liquid's asinine plan to launch a nuke." Johnny shook his head rapidly from his place on the ground, "Then why were you even a part of it in the first place?"

Johnny cocked an eyebrow as he tried to think, scratching his head, "I honestly don't remember… for some reason it sounded like a good idea, but a little while ago I started thinking about it…"

"And?" Naruto said expectantly, if he still wanted to do it then Naruto would just knock his ass out and throw him into the cell. He didn't want to kill a buddy, he was the only one of the Genome Soldiers that had been decent.

Staring into Naruto's eyes seemed to break whatever composure Johnny had left as he started nearly bawling in his response, "It's a stupid idea! I don't know what the hell I'm doing here Boss! But I couldn't quit! I don't know what happened, but it was like my morale just started falling!"

Naruto could only look down and shake his head at Johnny, 'Mantis brainwashed the ones that weren't fully onboard.' And now Mantis was dead after what Campbell and Naomi told him. He then smirked, 'Blowing the tank hangar to hell right under their noses probably just made things worse for the hold over the troops.' Johnny couldn't have been the only one that had been mindfucked into stepping in line fully.

He then realized that Johnny had been babbling the entire time that he had been thinking to himself, "-And I really, really don't want you to kill me Boss! I don't want to do this whole rebellion thing!"

"Johnny." Naruto tried to calm him down.

"-I'll just hide and stay out of the way and you'll never see me again!"

"Johnny." Naruto said in a slightly more exasperated voice.

"I'll leave the island! I'll leave the state! Hell I'll leave the whole country! I'll go right to Russia Boss, just don't kill me! I don't want to die for something I don't believe in!"

"Johnny shut up!" Naruto finally shouted, lifting him off of the ground and shaking him by his shoulders, "I'm not going to kill you, just chill out and let me think for a second!" The man was quivering in his grip, thus Naruto let him go and started pacing, "Okay… I need your help."

That got Johnny to stop panicking, if only because he was totally shocked that Naruto was asking him for help, "You need _my_ help? Me? Now by 'help' do you really mean 'death'? I'm just asking because that would make more sense to me." Yep, same old stupid Johnny. Good to have him back to normal… at least Naruto thought it was good for now. Maybe he was better off brainwashed? Nah, because experience told him that brainwashed Johnny was still pretty damn incompetent.

A deadpan look on Naruto's face was his answer, "No… I really mean help. What did you guys do with the girl that was caught before Snake?" For being stupid one way or the other there was the fact that if nothing else Johnny was the prison guard to the stars. If anyone knew where to find prisoners it was him.

"Ocelot took her somewhere else." Johnny said, racking his brain to try and pick up on where that place was, "I think he took her to the weather station on the canyontop behind the snowfield."

"Fuck that's a long way…" Naruto muttered before punching the nearby door, "And I still don't know how to open that damn door in the warhead storage building…" If he couldn't get through that door then he would have a hell of a time moving Meryl about if he even got to the weather station.

Johnny raised his hand as if he were in school, "Uh if you're talking about the door that they locked because the blizzard started kicking up tonight then I can open that door." He saw Naruto stare at him owlishly, "What's the matter Boss?"

"You?" He said incredulously, "They wouldn't give me a card key past level two, but they gave _you_ the password to open the gigantic door to the room that stores _nuclear warheads_?" He let out a bitter laugh before pulling up his facemask over his mouth and yelling into it, "I fucking hate FOXHOUND sooo much!"

Johnny, unaware of why Naruto was upset, waved his hands in front of his face and laughed at the misunderstanding, "No, no Boss, that's not it. I've got next to no clearance in this base." His friendly looking eye-smile in his balaclava really reminded Naruto of his old sensei Kakashi, "I just know how to hack into stuff… really, really well. I can go open that door for you if you want me to."

A grateful smile came over Naruto's face, "Johnny if you can do that then you're golden to me. You could walk right through there, all of you Genome Soldiers look alike." Yeah, because they all wear the exact same thing and they all wear balaclava masks. Johnny could take the place of someone that he had covertly finished off in that building until his own disappearance was registered… and even then they would think he was just dead since there was no time to really check for him during a time like this, "Head right out there. With the ruckus upstairs you could slip right out. I'll meet you there." He handed him his FAMAS back, "Can I count on you Johnny?"

"Absolutely Boss!" Johnny for some reason felt like he didn't want to let Naruto down, more than anyone else. He was the only person that had ever helped him out. None of the other Genome Soldiers that actually had the genes of Big Boss in them ever really gave him the time of day. Here Naruto was giving him a choice in the matter on what he wanted to do, and he wasn't even going to kill him if he said no… at least he thought Naruto wouldn't have killed him if he said no. In any case he said yes so it was a moot point in his mind, "That door will be open by the time you get there, I'll call you when it's done!"

"Great!" Naruto said as Johnny ran off to go upstairs to leave. Now normally Naruto would have palmed his face because of the panicked way he was going about things, but upstairs was probably a firestorm right now so Johnny could more than likely get away with running like that.

Now was the time to get moving. Snake was probably significantly ahead of him by now. He hoped that he liked the show he had done upstairs when he made his way out, but now he had to worry about finding Meryl, and if Johnny said the weather control station was the place to go then it wasn't like he had any better leads to go after. As an afterthought he looked into the room that Snake had been in to get a look at the conditions he had to deal with.

Needless to say he didn't expect the corpse of the DARPA Chief in the corner since he had already seen it, in much more pristine condition, in the cell block. He tilted his head in confusion when he saw that the blood was gone from his body… and then he remembered that there was one member in FOXHOUND that he hadn't seen at all yet on the base, 'Octopus always did do that nasty crap like taking his subject's blood into his body when he was going to mimic them…' He shrugged carelessly, 'I guess that nasty business caught up with him earlier tonight.'

Well now Decoy Octopus was accounted for. What a lame way to die.

He was planted in Donald Anderson's place at the start of the mission for some reason to throw Snake off. It didn't seem to do very much, but now he was dead for whatever reason and it wasn't Naruto's problem anymore if it ever even was at all. That was just one less member he would have to kill later. But looking at the dead body of the real DARPA Chief he figured from the cuts bruises and etcetera that Ocelot must have gone overboard when he was interrogating him on REX… crazy old man.

That was different though, he still had work to do and a promise to keep. If Campbell was going to keep good on his word to find out the fate of one of his few precious people then he would do his best to get Campbell's precious person free. Not only was it the right thing to do, he wasn't about to leave a comrade like Meryl to die.

Luckily that vent he used to get outside the first time in the cell block was still held on with shitty screws; yeah he just ripped that off and crawled right up that thing to the roof. As much as he wanted to see the flaming mess that was undoubtedly now the tank hangar it wasn't really worth it if he could get caught that way.

XxX

'Okay.' Naruto thought as he made his way to the top of the roof of the tank hangar. The goggles and the facemask did him good when he had to climb through the smoke being funneled out from the upper levels of the building, 'I'm out so I need to get to the building where Johnny is. He'll call me when he has the door open. That way I don't have to wait around.' He stopped thinking to himself when the sound of chopper blades kept beating through his ears.

Naruto versus a chopper with no weapon that could actually take it down out of the air was a no win situation, which he figured as he dove back into the ruined ventilation system on the roof as he watched it pass overhead, "Fucking Liquid…" He seemed to be saying that a lot today, "I should have just taken the extra time and risk and blown _that_ up instead. That would have really pissed him off." He had enough C4 for both. It might have taken a little bit more time and effort but it would have probably been worth it.

As he saw the chopper head to the communication towers, Naruto could only hope Snake had decent enough luck to find a way to deal with it. Liquid's anger over whatever his deal with Solid Snake happened to be was more than obsessive. A Hind D was kind of overkill for just one man wasn't it?

Putting his hand to his ear to make a call, Naruto heard the connection between the two find itself set up, "Uh yeah, Snake. I really hope you're inside one of the comm. towers right now."

"_I'm on the roof of the first tower about to cross to the bridge to the second. It's a long story. Wh-?" _ He stopped talking once he heard chopper blades in the air coming towards him, _"That's the Hind D isn't it?"_ He wasn't really asking, just really confirming what he already knew.

"Yep." Naruto replied plainly as he saw it begin to circle the communication towers, "…And Liquid's flying it… so good luck with that." He heard Snake sigh in exasperation on the other line at his 'good' luck, "Kick his ass Snake."

"_I'll try?"_ Sounds of gunfire, explosions, and then crashing came over the line, _"Son of a bitch, he took out the bridge! I'll call you later!"_

Naruto took his hand away from his ear to end the Codec conversation as he jumped off of the tank hangar and started running his way towards the nuclear warhead storage building, "Man Snake seems to have to fight all of the vehicles around here. That has to suck." Naruto once again made his way into the building he was targeting to advance further and wasted no time, not stopping his run before sliding under the low but open large cargo door, locking eyes with the sentry posted near the door before grinning ferally.

Unfortunately for the sentry, a fist to the testicles choked up his yell for assistance and alert, and a kick to the hands dropped his gun from his grasp. All that was left from that point was for Naruto to kip back up to his feet and end the job, giving the soldier a chop to the throat to make sure he stayed quiet and a spinning back kick that had enough force behind it to send the man backwards into the low door, getting him to audibly conk the back of his head on the metal at the bottom of it, knocking him out.

Naruto, impressed by himself, went through a grandiose spectacle of kung-fu gestures before another sentry rounding a row of stored nuclear warheads saw him doing such. Naruto saw him too in mid-pose, and they just stared at each other. Once the soldier's eyes shifted downward and saw the unresponsive man at Naruto's feet Naruto quickly threw a silver throwing knife at him from his storage sleeve, hitting him right in the neck and dropping him, thus allowing him to continue his victory dance until his Codec went off, "Yeah?" He whispered, deciding that it was time to move along through the room and find a place to wait before he got busted for real.

"_Boss?"_ So it was Johnny. He must have been hauling ass to get to the sealed door that fast, _"I've got the door to the back so that you can open it now. I'm already outside waiting on you… it's really cold so hurry up please?"_

Naruto stuffed the two men he had defeated/killed respectively through the open cargo door he had entered through to hide them for at least a short while he spoke to Johnny, "I'll be there in a bit, stay alert and stay out of sight, you're not supposed to be out there."

"_No problem Boss."_ Johnny said positively, _"There isn't anyone out here and I'm hiding in the storehouse just outside… it's still super cold though."_

Letting the conversation end there, Naruto climbed up onto a row of stored nuclear warheads to get an overview of the warehouse. The path to the door was pretty much free and clear because the other guards weren't even in the vicinity of it, probably because it was 'impossible' for anyone to open if they weren't allowed to.

However much to Naruto's advantage and to the disadvantage of the Genome Soldiers, the one thing Johnny most certainly did not suck at without a shadow of a doubt was hacking apparently. Talk about specializing.

So, running across the upper levels of the warehouse before dropping down by the shut door at the back, Naruto looked at a keypad that had a code that needed to be entered to open the door, but Johnny had hacked it. Where it would usually be red it was now green, so Naruto just hit a button on it and the door opened. The sound was strained as it rose up, so Naruto hit another button to stop the door's ascension high enough for him to squeak through under it.

Crawling under on his belly in a hurry to find himself back outside again, on what was supposed to be a supply road, though the blizzard had totally snowed it over. To the side there was a small ledge that led down to a little storehouse right next to the building, probably where Johnny was.

Naruto jumped down and started walking through the snow towards the building with the automatic door opening for him due to the access he had with his high level card key. Inside he found Johnny with his balaclava off chewing at the corner of a tin of rations that was frozen solid. It was funny to note that Johnny was blonde like Naruto was since he hadn't seen him without a mask before, his blonde hair went down to his neck as he chewed away at the tin of rations.

An amused look came over Naruto's face as he walked inside, "Johnny you don't want to eat that do you?" He said, getting the young man's attention, "They're so nasty."

Johnny shrugged and threw Naruto a plastic bowl of instant ramen, "Well I wasn't going to sit here and eat this, without water it's like a giant, salty, dry cracker." He shuddered at the mere thought of doing so, "It's probably all frozen too."

"Then I'll thaw it out and eat it later." Naruto grabbed the bowl and tucked it inside of his vest, patting it down to make sure it stayed put. Ramen was a luxury he wasn't sure that he would get again so he was going to make sure he had something to savor if he lived through this… just a little extra motivation if saving his own miserable life wasn't enough.

Johnny finally pried the top of his rations open and let out a triumphant laugh as he started to dig in much to Naruto's disgust. He personally despised rations that were meant for eating anytime, he would rather hunt and get something to eat that way than to eat one of those disgusting things. Even watching Johnny do it made him want to retch. No wonder the guy had upset stomach issues all of the time.

Naruto's Codec went off again, seemingly on fire tonight, but he could still hear the chopper in the distance, which meant that somehow Snake wanted something, someone else wanted him to help Snake, or someone else wanted something completely different altogether, "Hello?"

"_I'm so glad to hear your voice again little probie."_ There was that damn sexy accent again. That only meant one thing, she knew where he was. That was not good by any stretch of the imagination, _"To hear that you survived and didn't run away made my heart skip a beat. But you don't call? No word or anything? I thought we had something special."_

"Hi Wolf." Naruto said in a stoic voice as Johnny started choking on his food at hearing Naruto address Wolf, "We do have something special. Come on, you know. You shoot my clones, you think they're me… I run away and hide until you leave me alone… we've been doing this for a year now."

God that laugh of hers was a killer. As it echoed through his ears he thought he would melt on the spot. He was the only one that ever heard her laugh like that and he knew it, _"What can I say little probie? A girl likes a little consistency in her life every now and then."_

Naruto let out a bitter chuckle, "Well I'm the wrong guy if that's what you want. But I think what you really want is another fight." He shook his head, "Aren't you sick of it? You've got to realize, when you keep coming for me I'm going to keep beating your ass. That's what's going to happen. But don't worry Wolf, losing to Naruto Uzumaki doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you like everyone else!"

"_Funny, but you know you've never beaten me, just like I've never shot you. I want one more."_ Wolf said in an almost pleading voice, _"I want to fight you just one more time. I know that you can use a rifle, you just never chose to in front of me. You were always too aware of what I was doing on our missions without me even saying a word to not have experience. No running away this time, no backup, no diversions, no run-ins, just you and me."_ She really did want to fight him, he could hear it in her voice, it was begging him to do so, _"You have a rifle now?"_

It wasn't a question.

"Yeah." Naruto said, taking the Dragunov he had been keeping with him off of his back, holding it tightly in a one-handed grip, "You're somewhere outside aren't you?"

"_You know me far too well Naruto… You always did… better than anyone else."_ So why was this even happening? She was always his favorite. Why did she readily turn her back on him? Why did she keep the secret from him all the way until the end? She always seemed like she believed in him. He didn't understand it. But it didn't matter now. She was outside, she was in his way, she wanted to fight him, and she wasn't going to let him go. Neither he or Johnny were going to be able to just leave until this was over, and Johnny wasn't enough to handle this, he'd be sending him to his death, _"Come and find me."_

Naruto narrowed his eyes and spoke again, "Do you really think that you're gonna take something away from me that everyone in the world seems like they've been trying to take for the past five years?"

"_I already did."_ She quipped sharply, getting a growl out of Naruto.

"I meant my life."

"_I didn't."_

Silence reigned between them before Naruto's eyes momentarily softened as he stood up in place as Johnny watched him, "I'll see you soon Wolf." He said with a touch of fondness in his voice, as if he wasn't just about to fight her in a deathmatch.

"_I'll see you sooner little probie."_

And that was that.

Naruto looked over at Johnny who was looking at him, sporting the same serious look on his face that Naruto had, only he could tell that Johnny was way more nervous than he was from the way he was tightly gripping his FAMAS, "Stay here and don't come out until I call you Johnny. You would never make it back to the nuclear storage warehouse if she knew that we were in here." Naruto said as he walked over to the door, looking out of the tiny window at the front of it. It looked like the moon was hidden deeply by the clouds in the sky billowing down snow.

"Can you do it Boss?" Johnny suddenly asked Naruto, more serious now than Naruto had ever remembered seeing him. He guessed that the man's fear had to have plateaued at some point prior to this, he couldn't shake in his boots forever, "Can you really go out there and beat Sniper Wolf by yourself?"

"If I accepted the fact that I couldn't win then I definitely wouldn't be able to." Naruto replied, "It's one thing to fight when you know you can win." He shrugged his shoulders haplessly, "Anybody can do that. To keep fighting even when you know that you're probably screwed win or lose, because you believe in what you're fighting for… That's really something as far as I'm concerned."

"What do you fight for Boss?" Johnny asked him curiously, "What's the reason you do this for?"

"You know I used to be able to answer that question in a heartbeat." Naruto replied lowly, "I guess that's the reason I still fight. So I can find out my new reason. I'm not going to stop until I actually get my own answer."

Naruto pulled the facemask at his neck over his nose and mouth and let the door open only to be stopped by Johnny one more time, "Go kick her ass Boss."

"That's the idea Johnny." Naruto said sighing to himself at getting ready to step out into what he knew he'd be at a disadvantage for, "Time to reach out and touch somebody I guess…" He said as he stepped out back into the blizzard, half expecting to take a bullet to the dome right then and there… but he didn't. To this side he turned and saw the snowfield; the large space of wooded land that sat between most of the facilities at Shadow Moses. Wolf was in there. There was no doubt about it.

And with that in mind he jumped right over the fence that deposited him right in the pit that was the snowfield. It had been quite a while since he had been forced to fight in this sort of situation, and even back then it wasn't for real; it was just him training while using clones. Wolf was not a clone, she was the best sniper in the world.

There was good news and bad news about the fight he had just gotten himself into.

The good news was that he had cover. There were evergreen trees, boulders, small hills and snowdrifts for quick vantage points, and the like for him to use as cover, not even counting the blizzard itself working with him as a way to hide.

The bad news was that it wasn't as if Wolf didn't know how to use these things herself to her own advantage. She wasn't a dummy, she knew how to conceal herself and move around inconspicuously, just not in the same way that he did. Her sense of smell was also more refined than his was. If she couldn't see him she could still know he was around if she wasn't suffering from some sort of cold, and she probably wasn't.

These things ran through Naruto's mind as he quickly took cover behind the nearest snow covered boulder, hoping that the light color of his clothing would serve him the practical purpose he intended for them to serve now that he was outside and in a real battle. Naruto was about to stand up and begin looking over the battlefield through his scope to try and find a sign of Wolf, but relented from doing so, that wasn't the best course of action. That would be like a dandelion popping up in the middle of nowhere.

With this in mind he did his normal feeling out technique, knowing that it was going to hurt like hell. He created a Kage Bunshin and sent it up in his place to pan its sniper scope over the field to find a sign of Wolf. Better it than him, he had to use whatever he had to his advantage, and the one advantage he had most definitely was his superiority in numbers. If he played it smart they could take the heat off of him and help him find her.

Creating another clone to keep an escort for his sniper clone with an MP5K, Naruto stayed as low as possible as he moved out from behind the large boulder to begin his own search. Staying in one place for too long would get him shot, there was nowhere to hide from Wolf. He had learned that much from an entire year of 'playing games' with her. What she had learned on the other hand was possibly every single Kage Bunshin diversion trick he had up his sleeve.

Naruto heard the crack of a rifle, but no bullet came anywhere near him, telling him that she had found his clones and had taken a shot at one of them, but why had she missed? Taking out his clones had usually been a turkey shoot for her, there was no way she missed a shot at a clone in a hundred tries, 'She missed on purpose… If she hits a clone then I can get the direction of the bullet from where she actually hits it and where I feel the pain from it.' One of his Kage Bunshin tricks that he never told her he actually used to get her location in their games. Well it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out once the abilities of his clones were compounded.

So giving his clones a mental command to move elsewhere in their search, he continued on by himself. Wolf wouldn't actually shoot one of his clones now unless they were close to discovering her or she didn't know they were clones.

He still needed a good spotter clone he thought to himself as he ran through a row of trees. He formed a third Kage Bunshin and sent it up to conceal itself in the snow-covered evergreen to locate his deadly opponent. The more eyes he had around the field the better, and if Wolf wouldn't take a chance to give away her position to the original and get rid of a few clones then eventually one of them would find her and inform him about it.

With three clones out and about, two patrolling and one keeping an eye from the skies, two of them with standing orders to snipe, Naruto put himself low against the ground for a dual reason; to conceal himself further and to find any sign of Wolf's movements. He knew that she would never stay in one place after firing a shot and she had already done that just a moment ago. She was changing positions.

This was his chance to catch her in the open. With that in mind he created his last two clones with the standing orders to simply search for Sniper Wolf. Now it was just a waiting game, there was no need to rush and get himself killed. He had all the time in the world.

CRACK

'West.' Naruto thought to himself, twitching and blinking pain tears out of his eyes. Wolf had shot his clone in the trees right in the neck, it must have gotten dangerously close to actually seeing her. The mental command went up to his remaining clones in an effort to order them to box her in and corner her. He himself would hang back just in case she was dangerous when boxed in, he would use the clones for what they were meant for, expendable bodies meant to be sent in place of him.

He finally stood up and planned to head on in to aid in the search. His clones were never really the best at tracking. They were adequate and could pick up on obvious signs, they weren't brain dead, but they just couldn't go with the subtle nuances that came with it, they had no judgment, no instinct like his clones in the other world did when given vague commands to let their own minds take over and fill in the blanks. True skilled tracking was beyond their scope. But if he was coordinating their efforts mentally and in real time then they were probably the most effective squad in the entire world, which was what he was doing at the moment.

He could see what they saw in bursts if he truly focused on it. Training for years with his clones to make them battle effective had paid off. His ability to focus on particular clones and order them like they were video game characters took practice and incredible clarity of mind, but he never focused on anything other than the fight when he was in a battle.

XxX

(With Naruto's Kage Bunshin)

The group of four clones eventually converged on one location near the communication towers with frowns on their faces. They went in the direction of Sniper Wolf's shot, they thought they were boxing her in, but that wasn't the case. Somehow she had given them the slip rather quickly. The only thing they were able to find was a hastily dropped small container that held the muscle relaxants and anxiety relief pills she always carried on her person.

She would never leave these behind, they helped her steady her aim when she took her shots at her targets. One clone kneeled down and picked up the case only for there to be too much resistance in doing so, because of the wire underneath it that led into the snow. Pulling on the wire resulted in a large explosion that engulfed them all.

XxX

(With the Real Naruto)

Naruto stumbled hard and leaned against a tree as it felt like his entire body had taken the brunt of the explosion that his clones had just been caught in. So now he knew what it felt like to be blown apart… great. That was a new one, because everyone wants to be caught in a fiery explosion at least once in their life. At least most other people had the good fortune to die after it happened to them because living through an explosion at point-blank range sucked when you could still feel it.

CRACK

Naruto's eyes widened as the shot rang out, however in a heartbeat, a clone dropped from the trees holding its bloody neck, the one that had been shot earlier hadn't been wounded enough or in the proper place to destroy it and it had just taken a bullet for Naruto, this time taking enough damage to be forced to dispel. Still, it bought him a moment to get himself moving again, and this time he knew without a doubt where the shot came from, 'Not west, north.'

Naruto reached into his steadily depleting special supply pouch and hurled a smoke grenade hard over to where he figured Wolf's general area to be, either to cover her in smoke or to cover the area between himself and her. Either one of the outcomes would end up with her unable to see him, if only for a moment, but that was all he needed to get closer.

No Dragunov needed as he switched weapons back to his MP5K, a sniper rifle wouldn't help him get close which was the only scenario he was guaranteed to win in. As he closed in on the smoke cloud at the end of the forest of trees in a clearing, Naruto stopped short of coming out in the open. The smoke cleared to reveal a small pack of wolf-dogs looking around in a confused manner and barking once they saw him.

Naruto's face took on a grimace, 'She just pulled one of my tricks!' She just used the normal person version of a Kawarimi, no chakra needed when she had decoys in place already like the wolf-dogs, and they alerted her to his position whether they knew it or not. Maybe he wasn't the only one that had learned things since joining FOXHOUND. Wolf had used two traps akin to Naruto's own fighting style.

CRACK

And the second one actually resulted in him finally taking a shot from Wolf. The first actual bullet she had ever hit him with after a full year of trying. It got him on the left side of his chest, and his vest wasn't even close enough to stop a piercing round from a sniper rifle, he knew that. And Wolf used mercury bullets to make sure her targets died once they were shot in a bad place. Getting hit in the chest was a death sentence.

He dropped to his knees and clutched the spot over his chest where he had been shot, beginning to pant as his MP5K fell to the ground out of his grasp.

Wolf walked from out of her hiding place at the far end of the clearing near a snowed in jeep and headed towards Naruto, "I could at least spare you your request. To be shot in the heart instead of the head." She stopped directly in front of Naruto and kneeled down to get on his level, "I finally got you."

Naruto didn't verbally respond, he simply looked up into her eyes with the same shocked expression he had put on after being shot and reached under his vest, pulling out a plastic bowl of busted ramen with small traces of blood on it. Wolf's eyes widened.

Naruto's special vest, plus that little extra something behind it kept him from getting hit in the heart, and even with poisoned bullets you would have to hit him vital for something to really count.

"No…" Naruto said quietly, "You didn't." In a swift motion, Naruto jumped back from his knees to his feet and threw a punch at Wolf that she barely managed to block with her sniper rifle. With his fist bouncing off of the gun, Naruto grabbed a hold of it and used it to jerk Wolf towards him before he buried a fist into her stomach several times, causing her to stumble back gasping for air, her legs all but useless to her in their now rubbery state.

A follow-up leg sweep from Naruto easily knocked her to the ground where she scrambled back to get enough space to aim at him. Too bad a fight in close for her against him was the equivalent of him trying to take her on from long range.

Naruto slapped the length of the gun aside just as she fired again and punched at the ground only for her to keep crawling back to avoid him, she tried to take aim at him one last time off of his miss but he spun low and kicked the gun out of her hands just as she pulled the trigger, wasting the shot and disarming her.

She lunged for the gun to pick it back up but just as her hands were about to touch it she was grabbed by her collar and turned around, coming face-to-face with Naruto's Rasengan. It didn't get any closer however, he held off from using it.

"What are you waiting for?" Wolf asked him with blood trailing from her lip due to the internal injuries Naruto's vicious punches had caused her, staring down the bright blue orb of energy in his hand that was like a beacon in the blizzard, "Finish me. I know what that would do to me if you hit me with it… so finish me off."

"I can't kill you Wolf…" Naruto said quietly, still holding on tightly to her collar, "I don't want to. How could you ask me to do that after-?"

"It's your job. You have your orders. So do it." She replied, cutting him off, seemingly not afraid of meeting her end.

Naruto shook his head and let his Rasengan fade, "It's not my job! My job was to be a member of FOXHOUND, this was a responsibility to stop you guys the best way that I could! Nothing I've done today has been because of orders! No one's told me to do anything all day today, this has all been me!" He then noticed her smiling at him, "What are you smiling for?"

"I really was right all along." Wolf said, seemingly happy at the things that Naruto had just said, "That was always why I liked you little probie. You were always untamed, even when given orders you carried them out the way that you wanted. You never compromised your own morals or went against what you believed in. I guess this was why you and Liquid never got along. You were never truly on his side the way I was, you just followed his orders."

"I hated Liquid…" Naruto said, narrowing his eyes in anger, "I still hate Liquid for what he's doing, for what he did to me, I just don't like anything about him. And I want to hate you for betraying me Wolf, but I just can't do it. You were the only one that I really liked." His angry eyes faded almost instantly, "What you did for me…"

The smile on her face seemed to grow if that were possible, "Yes, we never did talk about that did we? I never got to ask you if you enjoyed your birthday present from me." Naruto opened his mouth to answer when she cut him off again, "But then I told you never to talk about it again after that night didn't I? I _did_ promise you I would make a man out of you."

Now it was awkward trying to keep things normal after Wolf had allowed him to make love to her in his room on his birthday, at least for him it was, but eventually he managed to pull it off. He almost set Mantis on fire when he found him picking around his head one day since he would undoubtedly find out that way and made sure the man never tried it again. When the sun rose the next morning she ordered him to forget that it had ever even happened and for whatever reason he acquiesced to her request.

They never talked about it, he never even mentioned it, though Wolf wasn't above alluding to it in passing to tease him. He still kept his word and never spoke of it again despite the fact that it ran through his mind whenever he had a down moment. An act of mercy from her in his mind since when would he ever find the time to actually do it otherwise? When he was hurt and injured badly enough that he would be sent home for good no girl probably would have touched him.

Naruto shook his head and slowly set her down on the ground, laying her down in the snow since he had hit her hard enough that she wouldn't be walking anywhere for a while, "Why did you do that for me?" He never understood why, and he never asked questions because he simply couldn't. He just came to accept it after a short while.

Wolf started to laugh from her place on the ground until it hurt her to do so. The wolf-dogs were whimpering at her injuries when they walked over to watch the aftermath of the battle between their two favorite people at the base, "It's really simple actually. Because I love you stupid." Once again she laughed at the shocked look on his face, "Is it really that hard to believe? I always get what I aim at eventually. I just got you in a different way first."

Naruto had to take an involuntary step back as if he were punched, "W-Why would you possibly say that you l-." He choked on the word, finding it hard to actually say. Why wouldn't he? He had never heard anyone say that to him and mean it in that way before.

"Love you?" Wolf finished for him, laughing slightly. He was still just a child in a few ways even now, "You have a personality that is inspiring. Your will to live is unmatched, even when you don't know what's worth living for to you, all you do is keep going. You're loyal to the people you think have a reason to be loyal to." She gestured to herself, "Just look at me. You didn't kill me even after all that's happened."

Naruto's fists started shaking at his sides, "I would have joined you…" He said, as if he were admitting it not only to her but to himself as well, "If you had told me that then I would have revolted with the rest of you."

"And that's why I never told you after that night." Wolf asserted, "You don't believe in the cause of why we're fighting. How could I possibly make you fall in love with me and take away your choice? You would have joined us just because I was fighting, whether you believed in it or not. I would have been caging you, I would have been stripping away one of the reasons I loved you for in the first place." She shook her head in disgust at the notion, "I never would have been able to live with myself… because I'd have done to you the exact thing we're fighting against. I would have been making you fight for my reasons instead of your own, I would have been using you like a puppet or a slave. I would rather you die as you are than live like a shadow of yourself."

Hearing her entire explanation calmed Naruto down. It was twisted, yes, but he could understand completely. She didn't want to turn him into something that she knew he wasn't even if he probably would have said that he loved her back. It wouldn't have been fair to him in the least especially when he meant something to her. He still had a question though, "Why didn't you kill me at the canyon? You gave me the chance to get away. Why didn't you just end it there instead of giving me a chance?"

Wolf, held her damaged torso as she painfully sat up against a snowdrift, "I couldn't kill you so helplessly. It wasn't right; I don't kill women, children, or those that aren't a threat."

"I was a threat even without a rifle." That was a terrible excuse, he had just shown it by coming back and biting her by defeating her.

"If I was going to kill you…" Wolf started before grimacing painfully, "Then I wanted to do it in a true fight. I wanted to face you down evenly, get a chance to look into your eyes as we fought, not at your back. It was why I shot your clone at the canyon and not you."

Naruto's eyes bulged. "You missed on purpose?"

A nod was her reply to him, "I can tell the difference between you and a copy Naruto. I've been watching you closely for over a year. That was to cover my own backside and give you the chance to come back and fight me for real. I wanted to see your skill, you are quite an unorthodox soldier." She smiled at him again, "You were not a disappointment… just like that night."

Naruto pulled his facemask down to reveal his entire visage to her, "So I guess I win."

"Yes you do." Wolf said tiredly, "Now go ahead and finish me off hero boy. You know everything about me, it's only right that it's you that kills me in the end. I've shamed myself by taking part in this plot, shamed myself in betraying you all for my revenge for Saladin's sake. I'm no wolf, I'm a dog."

Naruto firmly shook his head in the negative, "No you're not. You were always a wolf. No, I'm not going to kill you. You say you're shamed because of this? Well I'm not letting you get off easy by dying."

Wolf looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, "I've been waiting years for someone to come along good enough to kill me, it's you, and you say no to me once it comes down to it?"

Naruto nodded and shrugged his shoulders, "Well too bad because it's not your choice, it's mine. Winner chooses what happens to the loser and I say you're not dying yet. If you wanted to die you should have kicked my ass and told me to do it then or fought Snake instead."

Despite being stubbornly shot down from her own desired death, Wolf couldn't help but smile at him, he still wasn't playing by anyone else's will as long as he had his own reasons to believe in something else. That reminded her of someone else that wasn't willing to just be used by the people around him, "That bleeding heart of yours is your greatest weakness Naruto." She said out loud in an almost lecturing manner, 'So why do I love it so much?' She thought to herself.

Naruto didn't hear that second part however, he just heard the first more insulting part, and his eyebrow twitched at the remark as a manic grin came over his face, "Oh really? Well it's not a weakness tonight because who just kicked your tight little ass all over the place? Now Naruto says sleep!" He finished, planting the sole of his boot against the temple of her head rendering her unconscious.

He wasn't going to kill her. He didn't _want_ to kill her. Not before what she had said to him about their relationship, and he damn sure wasn't going to after. They still had some things to work out and shooting her was the easiest way out to say the very least. Also it wasn't his style to kill someone he had already beaten.

Taking a step back to take in the whole situation as he found himself surrounded by the wolf-dogs that could tell he had let Sniper Wolf live, and couldn't be happier about it due to the happy panting.

As his heart rate calmed down and the shellshock of what Wolf had just said to him had been given a short while to settle in his brain, Naruto took a moment to look around seeing that no one was anywhere near the area before exclaiming, "Kami, I'm so awesome! I didn't even fire a single fucking shot the entire time! Snake might be good, but he isn't Naruto Uzumaki good! What does he have on _this_?" He said, gesturing towards the unconscious Sniper Wolf.

And right on cue in the skies above the communication towers a massive explosion rang out.

XxX

(With Snake – Roof of Communication Tower 2)

Liquid's Hind D was engulfed in flames as it steadily spun from the sky above the 28 story buildings, "Come on, fly!" He shouted as the controls were of no use to him at this point in time, "Damn!" Even with the lead propeller going full blast it was just delaying the inevitable of the massive metal bird falling from the air, "SNAKE!" He screamed at the top of his lungs as it fell into the darkness below, moments later exploding below in a fiery crash.

Snake, standing in the middle of the rooftop covered in flames and bullet holes from dealing with the missiles and guns of the Hind D set his Stinger heat-seeking missile launcher down, "See you in hell Liquid." He walked to the edge and stared at the flaming wreckage that could be seen in the dark of night, smoke billowing high into the air, "…That takes care of the cremation." He said as he lit a cigarette and began to indulge now that his long engagement with Liquid's pain in the ass chopper was over.

Good riddance, that damn thing had been pestering him for the better part of the last hour and a half. Snake then put his hand to his ear as his Codec went off.

"_Snake."_ Otacon's voice said, _"The elevator's working now. You can head to the bottom of the tower."_

"You fixed it?" Snake asked. That stupid elevator… he had to take the stairs all the way to the top of the second tower after rappelling down from the first one when Liquid destroyed the bridge leading across to it, and then he couldn't even take the stairs down to the bottom of the tower to simply move along because there was wreckage blocking the way down on foot. Of course with his luck it would work once he was actually done and wasn't in a rush.

"_That's the thing. It just started moving by itself. It's headed your way now."_ Otacon then changed the subject to ask Snake something, _"That explosion just now. What was it?"_

Snake blinked before answering him as if he had just had to hop a fence or something, "Oh, I had to take out that helicopter." As Otacon marveled over his improbable victory, Snake didn't know why at that moment the wind sounded like Naruto's voice screaming to the skies about life being unfair and about how being badass should be distributed equally among peers. It had to be the wind though for sure… because no one's voice could have possibly carried up 28 stories over the sound of a flaming helicopter and blizzard winds.

He had never heard the wind sound like the word 'dattebayo' though. But then again he wasn't even sure that was a word in the first place.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter done. It's my birthday, and my gift to <strong>_**you**_** is this chapter. Hope you enjoyed it, and no you can't return it… what the fuck, this isn't some Wal-Mart sweater or something dude.**

**I'm out. Time to enjoy being 20… so far it's a lot like being 19 except you're going to die a little bit sooner. Oh well, at least there's ice cream… that I bought.**


	10. Heroes Do Exist

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I wants money!

**Chapter 10: Heroes Do Exist**

* * *

><p>(With Naruto – Snowfield)<p>

Naruto sat near the covered jeep, Naruto's clones steadily digging it out of its snowy prison, with a still unconscious and well tied up Sniper Wolf at his side and his cheek in his hand as he scoffed to himself at Snake's big win, "Big deal… He used probably used guided missiles." Why did Snake have to pull that right at the moment his self-esteem was at an all-time high? Shooting down a chopper singlehandedly was so unnecessarily cool… even better because he shot down Liquid. Naruto would have been talking all kinds of smack during that fight right until he blew Liquid all up in flames.

He wasn't jealous at all by the way.

All he had to do to get his cool back was tell Snake that he got with Sniper Wolf on his 18th birthday. Not that he would ever do that of course because Wolf might try to kill him with true motivation to do so if he did. Oh, and because it was a very personal thing that shouldn't be spread around… no matter how admittedly cool it was now that he had just gotten through talking about it with her.

"Boss! You called me right?" Johnny called out as he got close to Naruto, "Did you see all of that fire? Someone shot down the Hind D! That's incredible, who's good enough to do that?" Naruto had a deadpan look on his face as he pointed at Sniper Wolf's unconscious body, "Oh wow you really beat her!"

Naruto just started grumbling to himself about how people would think that Snake was cooler just because his win involved a giant explosion. He just beat a sniper across a gigantic field without using a single bullet, and nobody would probably say anything about that one because Solid Snake shot down a Russian attack helicopter by his damn self. People actually _saw_ that happen. Nobody saw him fight Wolf.

All Naruto could say was that Olga's dad Sergei was going to be pissed when he found out what happened to the chopper he gave FOXHOUND.

"Johnny I didn't call you here to pump my ego up…" Naruto said before grinning at the masked man, "But come on, what did I say? I'm the man. I'm Naruto Uzumaki; the top man in FOXHOUND… even if I'm just a probie and Liquid _is_ the commander." He then let out a scoff, "Not that he's commanding anything anymore after Snake shot his ass out of the sky."

Johnny nodded in agreement before he noticed that Sniper Wolf was still alive, "Um Boss, what are you going to do with her?"

Naruto looked at the jeep that his clones had just finished digging out, "It's not what I'm going to do, it's what you're going to do. You're going to hotwire that jeep Mr. Hacker, and then you're going to take Wolf as far away from this base as you can. I'll call you when everything is all over and then we can get the hell out of here. You and Wolf will officially be criminals, but I can get you out of the country, it won't be hard. You've done everything for me that you could so why wouldn't I help you?"

Johnny's eyes widened behind his balaclava, "You want me to take her?" What if she woke up and killed him? He already messed up guarding people two other times… although then it was mostly because Naruto himself came and kicked his ass, but still he didn't really like his chances. Another thing came to mind, "But what if I get stopped?"

Naruto shrugged, "Tell whoever stops you that Sniper Wolf gave you orders to leave. Make up some B.S. excuse if you need more." He pulled a handkerchief from Wolf's pocket, "This should be more than enough evidence to let you past if you get stopped. Just be cool… and if that doesn't work you have a gun, a vehicle, and the drop on them. Do the math."

"Cool…" Johnny said tentatively, "Right… I'm cool. I'll be cool." He looked at Wolf again and noticed her face twitch even though she was still unconscious. Even that slight movement dropped his self-belief, "I can't be cool Boss! I'm not the guy for something this big!"

As Johnny started another babbling rant much like he had back in the medical wing, Naruto reached into another of Wolf's pockets and grabbed her case of muscle relaxants and anxiety relief pills. Throwing a few of the latter into his hand and grabbing the front of Johnny's balaclava, he pulled it up and stuffed the pills into his mouth before pulling the mask back down.

Johnny had no choice but to swallow the pills and kept hyperventilating for about fifteen more seconds before he stopped and looked down at Wolf calmly, "So take Sniper Wolf as far away as possible and wait for you to call?" He said, as if his attitude had taken a full 360… which it probably had with as much drugs as had just been shoved down his throat.

"That's what I'm asking you Johnny." Naruto confirmed for him, lifting Wolf up bridal style and putting her in the backseat before covering her body in the tarp that he had found over the jeep to keep her concealed, "And if I don't come back at all or call you by daybreak don't go looking for me, just tell Wolf I'm sorry I'm so stupid and help her get to Russia."

"What's in Russia?" Johnny asked Naruto as he hopped in the front seat of the jeep and started to hotwire it, "You know my family's originally from Russia. I kind of always wanted to go." He mentioned offhandedly.

Naruto ran a hand over Sniper Wolf's cheek before covering the rest of her body with the tarp, "The Gurlukovich Mercenaries are in Russia. They gave Liquid the Hind, I kind of think they had a stake in this. They'll at least give you some time to come up with an actual plan if they don't take you in altogether. If things get tense just ask for Olga and tell her that Naruto Uzumaki owes her a massive favor." Johnny nodded as the engine of the jeep turned over, "But wait for me until after the sun rises first."

Johnny sat there for a moment to let the jeep warm up for a minute before he planned on driving away, "What are you going to do next Boss?"

"Go get someone else out of trouble and then go kill Liquid." Naruto admitted freely, fully willing to empty an entire magazine of any gun he had on him into Liquid's chest, because he knew that a stupid helicopter crash wouldn't kill Liquid. He wanted to watch the life leave his eyes personally to assure himself that everything was over, "And I don't mean kick the shit out of Liquid, no I'm really going to kill Liquid. I've wanted a reason to do it for an entire year."

"Can you do it?" Johnny asked him. Even he knew that Liquid was no one to be trifled with, especially if Liquid had actually survived a helicopter being shot from the sky and could still keep going to continue his plot.

Naruto gave him a firm nod before he took off running towards the weather station at the far end of the snowfield and the canyon. Why did everyone keep asking him that? If he couldn't do it then he wouldn't be saying that he would or could. First thing was first though. He had to get Meryl out… and hopefully she was still alive and well.

XxX

(Far Edge of Canyon at the End of Snowfield – Outside of the Weather Station)

Oh yeah, this was the place for sure. There were more sentries out front than there were inside of the nuclear warhead storage warehouse and just to guard a stupid weather facility… yeah that was really practical right now. Naruto tried to guess just off the top of his head what the weather was like right now, in February in Alaska; fucking cold and snowing. Wow, what a tough forecast, he could see why this was such a valuable place to keep under close guard… not really.

There was _something _in there worth guarding apparently, and it damn sure wasn't forecast equipment.

It was a plain grey single-story building of decent size with a bunch of dishes on the top of it that sat up an artificial slope up the canyon wall. He wondered if he could just take out all of the soldiers out front and around the station without raising the alarm to the entire base that he was there. It was kind of at the eastern edge of the base so even if the alarm was raised they would have to haul ass to get reinforcements there in time to do anything to him. A normal run from the main part of the base for a normal soldier would take twenty minutes

In that case he didn't really care. It would take ten minutes to find Meryl and get her out. That was way more time than he needed so it was indivisibly whoop-ass time, just to make sure he could leave easily when he actually had her in case she couldn't walk.

And he had a sniper rifle… and five Kage Bunshin dispersed around the building… and the advantage of the posted soldiers not knowing he was anywhere near them at the moment.

And so in a whirlwind of scoped violence that probably would have made Sniper Wolf fall in love with him all over again Naruto and his Dragunov-toting clones cleared the outside of the weather station in a matter of seconds. As has been mentioned before, in the right conditions Naruto and his clones were the most effective squad in the entire world. With the outside cleared, Naruto dispelled his clones and headed inside to search the building itself.

As he ventured deeper inside and saw a distinct lack of guards the way there were outside, Naruto left a clone stationed back to watch his own back from being ambushed inside while he was looking for Meryl. If he didn't find her there then he was pretty much out of ideas as to where to find her. There were only so many places that were out of the way for her to be stashed away.

However in the main control room he found her tied up and unconscious. At least they had the good sense and mercy to help her with her gunshot wounds from Wolf as the injuries had been dressed and the bullets had been removed. He got closer to find that she was still alive when he took her pulse, bringing him a sigh of relief, "Well there's some good news today I guess…" He said quietly to himself as he touched his hand to his ear to use his Codec to send out a call, "Hey, Colonel. You should already know that I found Snake and I just found Meryl. Considering everything that's happened she's actually as well as she could be."

"_Thank goodness."_ Campbell said in relief at hearing that news, _"This whole thing is messy… she was never supposed to be involved in this."_

A frown came to Naruto's face at such cryptic words, "Well either way don't worry about it." He said, assuring the man that things were okay at least for the time being, "I have to wake her up though, I can't do much if I have to carry her all the way out of here. And even then things aren't done yet." His eyes hardened, "Speaking of our deal, do you know anything yet?"

Campbell let out a grunt over the line, he couldn't believe he was getting strong-armed by a kid his niece Meryl's age, _"You have to give me more time than just an hour Naruto. I sent out the order and they've prepared a chopper to go out to Master Miller's home. Like I said; you'll know when I know."_

"As long as we're still clear." Naruto asserted, "I like Meryl, but I _don't_ like being screwed over… it's already happened once today and I'm going to kill the guy that did it right now. Don't make me do something else drastic."

"_Don't do anything that would make you a criminal Naruto."_ Campbell warned him with a threatening undertone, _"So far you've adhered to your duty and done what you could for your country. But there's still a chance that you could be considered a conspirator after this. Don't do anything that would assert that."_

Naruto had to hold back his laughter with a snort. Yeah, that would have been an effective threat if he actually had something that being a fugitive would have disrupted, "Okay, sure let's go with that." He returned, "Let's say that I do end up a fugitive or whatever. All anyone has on me is my body of work. I don't have a listed address or anything concrete and only a handful of people know I exist at all. All you've got on me is a Codec frequency that I can change or get rid of. If I take that away you wouldn't even know the first place to find me."

There was no background information on him simply because it didn't exist. The only thing there was the bare minimum of just what he needed to join the military… and most of that was faked other than his name. He had no lineage, no listed relatives or anything of a personal nature, and no credit history or anything that could be traced. The only people that knew of his relationship with Miller were a few members of FOXHOUND that bothered to pay good attention to him; even on that front Mantis was dead and Wolf wasn't an issue anymore… and Liquid was about to be dealt with shortly.

It wasn't as if Naruto couldn't hide if he wanted or had to.

"Now if you just check everything out for me then everything is good and having this conversation is a waste of time and breath because I won't do anything." Naruto finished as he cut Meryl lose with a kunai as he kept his other hand by his ear to keep talking, "I keep my promises, but I'm not going to let myself get Dr. Clark-ed again if I can help it."

"_What does that mean?"_ Naomi asked him as she chimed in on the conversation.

Naruto finished cutting Meryl loose and put his kunai back up as he addressed her, "Well I heard that it happened to Gray Fox too so I guess I can tell you… Two years ago that bitch wound up with me in her lab after I was wounded badly in Iraq. I think we broke out at the same time because I can remember guards saying that she had just died when I was getting out. I never knew who she was or why I was taken but I think it was for research on my genes… I don't really know." He said, scratching his head.

"_H-How long were you there?"_ Naomi asked him, _"Gray Fox was there for four years after what had happened in Zanzibar Land."_

"I don't know, a few months." Naruto told her. If he couldn't talk to the chief of FOXHOUND's medical staff about what happened to him then he couldn't talk to anyone about it, "I never found out anything else about it and I never told anyone what happened to me but everyone in FOXHOUND already knew somehow."

"_That's because Dr. Clark was the chief of the FOXHOUND medical staff before me Naruto…"_ Naomi said solemnly. She noticed that he hadn't said anything, he was simply silent at hearing this news, _"It's not surprising that you weren't able to come up with this information on your own, Dr. Clark and the things she found herself involved in were of top-clearance secrecy. After her death there was never any data on you or any in-depth mapping of your unique gene structure when I took over in her place."_

Naruto dragged a hand down his face in order to get a grip on what was going on, "Sniper Wolf told me that Ocelot and Liquid watched me be taken away right before I ended up in her hands. Those two knew what happened to me the entire time and those bastards could just look me in the face knowing what she did to me and knowing that I wanted some kind of answer." He finally let out a sigh, "I-… Thanks Dr. Naomi. At least I know something now. It's been almost two years and I never knew anything." With that he ended the conversation.

Now he had to deal with getting Meryl out of there. She was really out cold. That was just great. He couldn't wake her up so now he was stuck sitting there until she decided to stir. Otherwise he didn't know what he was going to do to wake her up and if she wasn't awake there wasn't much he could do to go after Liquid whom he had a reinvigorated interest in tracking down to break his foot off in his ass.

As he waited he swore he could hear jangling of some kind. He focused his ears on it but the sound quickly stopped. Still, there was no such thing as just hearing things in a situation like this, and he quietly formed a Kage Bunshin to watch over Meryl while he went to check things out.

Naruto drew his SOCOM in preparation for whatever was to occur and headed into the other rooms in the direction of quiet whistling that he could hear, sounding like old spaghetti western showdown music, "Ocelot." Naruto said in a sing-song voice as he crept into the room where he knew he would find the man. Poking his gun around the corner as he stepped into the room, he found Ocelot with his usual smirk on his handlebar mustachioed face.

"I knew I'd run into you eventually brat." Ocelot said, hiding his injury from Naruto's sight as the boy was unaware that he was missing his right hand, "Good work outside. From what I could see that little slaughter was surgical." He said in reference to the eradication of the men outside, trying to play against Naruto's nice-guy mindset.

Naruto scoffed as he stepped into the room. There were four rows of equipment between Naruto and Ocelot as they stood at opposite ends of the room, "Trying to get me to feel bad for killing a soldier is like trying to get an oiling crew to feel bad for drilling into the earth. It's my damn job, and we all knew the risks that came with being here."

Ocelot just started chuckling, "You like the killing. You love the feeling of putting your life on the line in a fight. It's the same reason why I love reloading my revolvers during battle, the rush."

"I do like to fight, but I _don't_ like the killing." Naruto admitted and denied at the same time as he sized Ocelot up, "That doesn't mean I won't do it though… Take you and Liquid for example. I'm going to kill Liquid. That's just all there is to it. There's no if, ands, or buts about it; he's dead when I see him. You on the other hand; I'll try not to kill you but only because I need one of you bastards alive to answer my questions. If I end up killing you well then too bad for me I guess." He said as if it would just be a minor setback if he killed Ocelot instead of capturing him here.

Ocelot merely laughed at Naruto thinking he could just get any of his 'answers' so easily, "You have no idea exactly how deep this rabbit hole goes do you?"

"I know you know who took me from Iraq and did experiments with me!" Naruto snapped at him irritably, "I know the bitch was a part of FOXHOUND until she died… and I say good riddance as far as that goes. So why didn't you tell me? Why did you even let me join or even ask for me at all?"

Ocelot couldn't care any less if Naruto was getting upset at his lack of knowledge over the situation judging by his calm response, "Because Liquid wanted to see if you were an agent of theirs. It was too much of a coincidence that the recruit we were scouting out just up and disappeared for months only to resurface. You could have been a spy after that since we didn't have access to you even though it was known by the top brass that we were interested in you. So Liquid reached out to your benefactor, in case you resurfaced anywhere we would know since you would return to him first, and we were right. Ever since then we've been watching you to see if you knew of our plot to take Metal Gear REX and break away from the U.S. government… but you didn't know anything. Better safe than sorry though."

That was why they wanted him after his disappearance? So they could keep an eye on him. But who the hell would he have been a spy for? He didn't ask, he just continued to listen.

"It was too close to our deadline to begin our plans to get off course and pique their suspicion so we took you into the unit but kept you far enough away that you knew nothing." Ocelot explained, "At first we tried to just get rid of you once we knew you weren't a spy. The missions to steal and retrieve the combat vehicles from fortified locations for us alone? The mission you were sent on with Wolf in Iraq? They were all meant for you to die in the field, and in the last one Wolf was supposed to kill you herself if you didn't just roll over and die… but you survived each time so against Liquid's better judgment he extended the olive branch to you once our insurrection began, but you turned it down and have been a headache ever since."

Naruto couldn't help but let a smirk grace his features, "Well does that finally get the point across that I don't suck?" Ocelot could only laugh himself in response. Did that man take anything seriously? Naruto had to really wonder sometimes.

"I never thought you were a bad fighter kid." Ocelot said, his left hand twitching near his revolver holster, "I told you back when we first met that I wanted to fight you. I never stopped wanting to fight you. To go against Solid Snake was my real goal, and I did that. To fight the man that killed Big Boss. Then there was you, you remind me of someone else I just can't put my finger on."

"Maybe after I kick your ass a little bit you'll figure it out!" Naruto said before firing at Ocelot, missing due to the man dodging and hiding and having to himself duck behind his back row of equipment to avoid immediate return fire from Ocelot's revolver, 'Okay, he has six shots before he reloads… and he can reload while he's hiding to get himself back to six if I get out of his sight before he runs out of bullets.'

With this in mind Naruto figured he would have to get Ocelot to waste six shots before he could get a good opportunity to attack him. In a firefight across the room he would lose. Ocelot could just take cover from his shots and ricochet return fire at Naruto without ever exposing himself. The old bastard was a damn good shot. A sadist and a cynical dickhead of epic proportions yes, but no one would ever say that Revolver Ocelot couldn't shoot his guns. He had to play this smart to win.

Or else he'd be digging .45 rounds out of his ass. If he messed up then Ocelot would shoot him there just to be funny.

Naruto poked his head over his cover just to duck down when he found Ocelot already aiming at him, missing the shot meant to take the sunny blonde's head out, "Keep your head down kid or you just might lose it!" Ocelot quipped amusedly before ricocheting a shot off of a wall that Naruto was forced to move away from as well, "You can't hide from me either coward."

"Hiding doesn't make me a coward old man. This is a battle." Naruto said to Ocelot after dodging as he went into his sorely depleted extra supplies to pull out a grenade, "I told you bastards that I'm a ninja, and I don't fight fair!"

With that, Naruto threw the grenade from behind his new set of cover at the Russian gunslinger only for Ocelot to smirk and shoot the metal explosive orb out of the air, dropping it well short of its distance between himself and Naruto.

Said young soldier was hiding however and didn't see the grenade drop short. He just heard the explosion and figured that if it didn't hit Ocelot, and he knew that it wouldn't, it would at least create an opening for him to take advantage of to get close. He felt his chances in a fistfight were much greater than a firefight.

Naruto jumped over his cover and leapt to the next row of equipment in front of him to get closer to Ocelot, only for the man to pop up from hiding completely unscathed, grinning evilly at Naruto as he unleashed a shot from his revolver that hit Naruto in his chest and knocked him from his higher point to the ground. Naruto had to thank his vest as it was certainly taking one hell of a beating tonight.

"You need to clean that fighting style of yours up kid. You're not so fast that I can't track your movement." He heard Ocelot chide him loudly, "You've got the moves and you've got the talent, but you're too reckless to keep fighting the way you do against anyone that's actually good. Well that is of course unless you wanted to get yourself shot in which case I have to say good job."

He hated that old man so much. He could never one up that jerk, even when verbally jousting with him. He always found a way to push Naruto's buttons. It was probably part of his thing as an interrogator, knowing how to get in your target's head and all of that jazz.

Naruto got back to an upright position, not willing to even begin to admit defeat yet. Ocelot was quicker to take aim and shoot than him. He needed to find a way to beat this. As he thought that he had to move an entire row back way from Ocelot in order to dodge another ricochet shot. Why was he so damn good at that?

Reaching into his supply pouches that housed his actual ninja gear, Naruto looked at the fistful of shuriken in his hand, 'I guess it's time to go old school again. I haven't had to rely on fighting like this in a while.' He hadn't had to fight like a ninja since he had fought Vulcan Raven during his initial test, and even then they just thought it was a rudimentary trap. Once again he had done a very good job of keeping his body of skills away from the prying eyes of his FOXHOUND 'comrades'

"Do you quit yet?" Ocelot spoke up again, making sure his revolver was fully reloaded. So far Naruto hadn't noticed his injury which was good because he didn't want to hear the brat's smart-ass mouth joking about how he lost his hand, "Some soldiers are admired for just coming to fight in the first place. I on the other hand prefer those that come to kill… but then again winning isn't everything."

Naruto was busy preparing his shuriken with metal wire in the holes through the middle, "Winning is everything. The only one who remembers you when you come second is your girlfriend." The loud bark of a laugh he heard from Ocelot served an actual purpose other than letting Naruto know that his stupid joke was at least amusing. He basically narrowed down Ocelot's location and with the multiple shuriken he had in his hands he had room for error.

Naruto made a loud ruckus of standing up, hoping that Ocelot would already be there when he stood up which he was. Taking care to dodge the first shot from his enemy, Naruto let fly with eight shuriken at Ocelot who merely ducked and dodged. He jumped up to shoot at Naruto again only to be stopped by even more shuriken being thrown at him. This time when he ducked and covered, the barrage didn't stop, with the sounds of metal thudding into things all over the room, Ocelot had to wonder if the kid was hallucinating or what. He wasn't hitting the broad side of anything with his attack.

"What were you throwing at, my shadow?" Ocelot snapped as he stood up, only for Naruto to make as if he were about to throw the black kunai knife in his hand at him. Ocelot jumped to dodge only to find himself suspended in the air, "What?" He found himself caught in a mess of wire as it finally gave out and fell to the ground.

Naruto smirked as Ocelot's weight forced the metal wire he had lined his shuriken with to give way. He made a veritable spider web with his seemingly errant throwing of the small metal stars, and they were all anchored to the ring of a kunai that he had stabbed into the wall closest to him, "Gotcha old man!" Naruto yelled victoriously as he grabbed the mass of wires that Ocelot had tangled himself up in and pulled them tightly, constricting them to whatever parts of the man's body they had gotten around. He then stuck his foot to his row of cover to keep himself anchored as he started repeatedly tugging violently on the bunch of wires in his hands.

Ocelot found himself repeatedly slammed hard, usually with his head leading, against his far row of sturdy cover, bashing him again and again into it as if he were a fish attached to a line that got stuck between two rocks, 'This brat is bashing my damn brains in!'

Meanwhile on the other side of the room, Naruto was standing horizontally on his cover that was bolted in the ground as he seemed to be doing exercise rows, rows that were slamming Revolver Ocelot into machinery bolted to the ground, "I'm bowflexing the hell out of you Ocelot! Are you still conscious over there? Hello?" This was great! One entire year of more or less being Ocelot's little lackey and he was putting the boots to him and showing him just what he was made of.

'I. Hate. This. Kid.' Ocelot thought in rhythm of his body and face smashing against his row of machinery. He was actually starting to dent the metal with his visage. In desperation Ocelot came up with an idea, and he would only have one shot to make it work. He slowly started to work his body upwards whenever Naruto jerked him towards the machines. Eventually his head poked up over the top and he was able to get a good look at Naruto who was still trying to knock him out in his ingenious manner. He had to give him points for originality, he had never seen anyone use wires to fight like this before.

He then slowly started to work his left hand holding his revolver up, keeping the movement of his arm out of sight of Naruto until he got it high enough that he could aim without being seen. Once Naruto let his ropes go slack once more he lifted his revolver and gave off one well aimed shot that he knew would strike true.

Naruto gave one last pull of his ninja wire just as something hit him right in the forehead hard, forcing him to let go of the wires as he was knocked to the ground again. He didn't move and Ocelot knew it, not willing to stay any longer as he didn't care whether Naruto was dead or not. He fled quickly from the weather station to return to Liquid and REX and to get all of that metal wire off of his person.

Naruto lay sprawled out on his back after getting shot in the head by Ocelot until he let out a noise, "Ow…" He started stirring and sat up holding his forehead, "That really hurt." He let his hand drop to allow the round from Ocelot's revolver to fall to the ground. There was a significant dent in the metal forehead protector of Naruto's headband, right on the leaf where he had been shot.

Touching at the gunshot dent, Naruto had to breathe a sigh of relief, "Now I see why they gave us these when we graduated the Academy." He knocked on the metal a few times and sighed in relief as he stood back up. So he couldn't beat Ocelot and Ocelot couldn't beat him. And if there was one other thing that Ocelot knew how to do it was run away. It was time to get the hell out of dodge and get moving again.

Heading back into the room where he left Meryl, Naruto found his Kage Bunshin diligently standing guard over the girl attentively. With no more use for the clone he allowed it to dispel and found that the girl had awoken from whatever unconscious state she had been in, "Good to see you're awake." He said in greeting.

"Naruto?" Meryl rubbed her eyes as she focused on the sight of him. She then remembered the last thing she happened to be awake for, "Where's Snake, is he alright? What about that sniper that shot me? Where am I?"

Naruto kneeled down on the ground near her in an attempt to calm her down, "You're at the weather station, they took you here after you were wounded by Sniper Wolf and captured. Snake's fine too. I broke him out before I came here to get you, he's still out trying to shut down Metal Gear REX. And don't worry about Wolf, I beat her already. Now how well can you move?" He asked her about her wounds.

Wolf shot Meryl in both legs to disable her and in her right arm to disarm her. She was wounded in the thighs and bicep though. Those were manageable injuries, "I'm fine. Moving around is going to be a real pain, but it's nothing I can't take." She smiled at Naruto, "You got shot in the chest and you're still moving around like nothing happened to you so I shouldn't complain."

Shaking his head, Naruto moved back so she could shift herself into a comfortable sitting position, "You shouldn't compare yourself to me on the taking damage scale. We're not the same at all, and I'm not talking about the me being a boy and you being a girl thing."

"It better not be." Meryl threatened jokingly. When she tried to stand up she found it difficult to do so, "Ugh… my body's stiff."

Naruto made a pair of Kage Bunshin to be stationed outside and stand guard over the building, "Take your time and get yourself together. We're really going to have to get moving sooner or later. Ocelot hightailed it out of here and who knows where he's going. We can't stay here in case there are more Genome Soldiers coming."

Meryl nodded and focused on massaging her legs back to use before coming up with a way to kill time while she was treating herself, "So Naruto… is that your real name? It sounds kind of weird."

A grin and a shrug came from Naruto, "Then I guess I'm just weird because that's the name I've always had." He then switched to pouting, "I never even got a codename… I'm still pissed off about that."

Not able to do anything but laugh at the look on his face, Meryl decided to ask him another question, "You are my age right? You're 18 years old?" A nod came from the blonde, "How did you wind up being a soldier before you were even 17 years old?"

Naruto's face took on a reminiscing look as he answered her, "Well fighting is the only thing I'm good at, the only thing I'm able to do. I'm not that smart, I never went to school in this country and the school I did go to only taught me how to fight. I don't have any family… there was never anyone responsible for me so there was no one to really stop me from doing what I wanted." He then smiled, "That and I had the connections of someone with one hell of a track record and a recommendation from a major bigwig. I've been taught to fight since I was eight, I was thirteen when I started my military training, fourteen when I finished and I've been fighting in some way ever since."

"Wow…" That was one hell of a rundown of his entire career. While Meryl was learning how to multiply in elementary school Naruto was learning how to kill and fight for his life. She wanted to be in the military because her father had been a soldier and her uncle had been a highly decorated veteran that used to run FOXHOUND, it was more or less the family tradition and she had trained herself since she was a preteen, "Your background is insane. You're an orphan, a child soldier, and you're still so well-balanced."

She didn't really know him that well if she thought that Naruto was well-balanced. He really wasn't, he never really was. Even people in Konoha would say that. It's just that while he had been living with Miller and Catherine he figured out what was appropriate in most case and just learned how to hide it well. She only knew him for a day though, there was plenty of time for her to realize that Naruto was totally insane… if they lived to survive Liquid's insurrection of course.

Naruto merely rubbed the back of his head sheepishly at all of the attention he was getting. He wasn't used to new people paying attention to him, much less with being impressed by the things that he told them about himself, "It's not that big of a deal you know?" He said before chuckling slightly, "I'm just a kid that got a weapon put into his hands a long time ago. There's nothing that big about a guy that learned how to kill people when he was a kid. Anyone can do it if they lived like me."

Meryl shook her head at Naruto's self-deprecating way of describing himself, "No, you're more than just some guy with a gun. And you're not just some killer either. It really is amazing." She said honestly, surprising Naruto with how determined her eyes looked as she tried to convince him, "It's amazing that you actually survived a life like that. I was in high school writing term papers and you were off somewhere getting shot at on a daily basis. And you can act like that's not a big deal and that it's normal."

"Well… for me it is normal." Was the simple response from Naruto. He knew that in this world those things, while not unheard of, were strange; in his world though those things were normal. The life expectancy for a ninja was very low, so they never concerned themselves with the prospect of dying unless they were directly facing the possibility. That was how he lived when he was in Konoha and he never changed his mindset when he started fighting in this world, "This is the only thing I've ever known how to do Meryl. If I had to stop fighting tomorrow, I couldn't do anything else. That's just the way it is."

"Do you have a girlfriend?" Meryl asked curiously, "Have you ever had a girlfriend at all?"

Naruto let out an amused laugh and shook his head, "No. I've never had time to find one or even look. You're the fifth woman I've met and had a good conversation with in five years." Yeah, trolling through the jungles of the Philippines, stomping through the deserts shooting at people, and being isolated with and being hazed by FOXHOUND gave him plenty of time to pick up women that lived in urban settings. Not to even bring up the fact that most girls his age had their pick of actual boyfriends that more than likely wouldn't end up riddled with bullets on a battlefield two continents away, "I figure I'm not much of a lover, but I think I'm one hell of a fighter."

"At least you know how to lighten a mood." Meryl commented, grateful of that little ability. Things were getting far too stressful while she had been with Snake. If she hadn't gotten captured she might have wound up making a mistake later on when the nerves got to her and gotten them into even worse trouble, "There's something about you that's really good on morale, even at a time like this."

Naruto stood up from where he had been kneeling down to stretch out his legs, "Yeah well I've learned that it doesn't matter how serious you try to be, it doesn't make you better or worse in a fight. War is a miserable wretched experience that takes everything positive about a person and snuffs it out, slowly getting rid of the light in people's eyes and whatever goodness man can do." He said in a bored, nonchalant manner as if he wasn't speaking about a serious topic, "The second a gun is put in your hand and you're sent off to fight it doesn't matter how good of a person you are… sooner or later you're going to be a shell of yourself. You're going to see the worst things imaginable, you're going to do things that you never thought you would have to do, and you're going to find out just what you're willing to do to stay alive and to make sure your enemy dies."

Meryl finally got enough feeling back in her legs to stand up and she did so, still staring at Naruto as she focused intently on what he was saying, "And you've seen these things?"

"I blew a man in half with a explosive in Afghanistan." Naruto admitted, "I called in an airstrike on a base rooted deep in the jungle in the Philippines and watched two men run out from the wreckage on fire burning to death. I've killed more men with a kunai than most people have killed with their standard issue weapons." He gave her a look of intent, "If I turned all gloomy and downcast about the things I've seen then I lose. I'll lose my true edge, what makes me special. I'll end up being cynical, I'll hate myself, I'll lose my faith in people…"

"-You'll end up like Snake." Meryl interjected quietly.

He didn't want to admit it like that because Naruto honestly liked Snake. But that was the case. There wasn't any spin that could be cast over it. Snake had his moments, he could be pleasant, but it was a rare instance when he was, especially while working as both Naruto and Meryl knew by now. Naruto really didn't want to wind up like that, hero or not. He liked the way he was, "Snake… doesn't trust anyone. And he really doesn't have the wrong idea to be honest, but he's wrong about that. Everyone needs _somebody_ to trust… even if it's just one person."

It was a basic idea, to find one confidant even if you chose to turn on everyone else around you. One person can't take on the world, "So do you trust me?" Meryl asked him seemingly out of nowhere. It even surprised her that she said that.

Naruto turned and started walking out of the room as he was now officially ready to leave and continue his search for Liquid, "You haven't given me a reason not to since we've met… so yeah. Yeah, I do trust you. And I hope you trust me too."

'How exactly am I supposed to not trust someone that's gone out of their way to help me twice?' Meryl thought to herself as she followed Naruto outside, "So where are we going now?"

"Deep into the heart of this place." Naruto informed her as they stepped back outside into the cold. The blizzard was starting to taper down but it was still firmly dark outside. It was only a few hours to daybreak, "I can get access to the underground parts of the base now." He turned towards her as they both walked away, more or less ignoring the bodies that Naruto left outside when he first showed up, "REX is down there… so I guess it's time for me to see a Metal Gear up close and personal."

XxX

(With Snake – Underground Maintenance Base – Warehouse)

In a warehouse, with most of the room stuck with layers of frost due to its placement in the middle of the permafrost layer of the ground, Vulcan Raven stood leaning against one of the large cargo crates that freely populated the room. His body was covered in wounds from explosions and shrapnel delivered to him in battle by Snake and his use of guided missiles to do him damage, "Just as the Boss said…" Raven said weakly, still standing, "It is my existence which is no longer needed in this world."

Snake walked up on him, brandishing a pistol. Raven was no longer able to hold up his weapon as he slumped against a wall and slid to the ground. A raven flew through the warehouse and landed on Raven's shoulder as the man sat dying.

"…But my body will not remain in this place." Raven continued to say, "My spirit and my flesh will become one with the ravens." All around in the upper rafters of the warehouse the ravens he spoke of were overlooking the two pair of soldiers below, "In that way I will return to Mother Earth who bore me." Raven shakily got back up to his feet with the help of the wall, "Snake! I will be watching you… understand?"

Snake merely holstered his weapon and walked up to the giant of a man who was handing him something, a card.

"Take this security card Snake. It will open the door to the end of the base." Raven said.

All Snake could do was look at the card being handed to him by a man that had just tried to kill him, "Why?" He felt he had to ask.

"You are a snake which was not created by nature." Raven explained cryptically, "You and the Boss are both from another world… but unlike Naruto yours is a world that I do not wish to know. Go and do battle with him. I will be watching from above." A smile crossed his face, "First I'll give you a hint though. The man who you saw die before your eyes… was not the DARPA Chief. It was Decoy Octopus… a member of FOXHOUND. Our master of disguise, he copied his subjects down to the blood, so he drained Donald Anderson's blood and took it into himself." Raven shook his head pitifully, "He was not able to deceive the angel of death however."

Snake didn't get it however, "But why go through all of that trouble?" He asked Raven who looked like his legs were just this close to giving out, "Why impersonate the chief?"

A laugh merely came from the large man, "That is the end of my hint. You must solve the rest of the riddle yourself." With that the ravens began to fly all around the room, getting closer and closer to Vulcan Raven, "Snake! In the natural world there is no such thing as boundless slaughter. There is always an end to it." As he said this the ravens began to land on him and peck away, starting to eat him alive. Snake merely turned and walked away as this occurred, not turning his back to witness the scene, "You are different."

"What are you trying to say?" Snake asked, still not turning around even though he could hear the pain in Raven's voice and could hear the sounds of what was occurring.

"The path you walk on has no end…" Raven said, his voice getting weaker as Snake got further away, though the echo could still be heard, "Each step you take is paved with the corpses of your enemies. Their souls will haunt you forever. You shall have no peace." This sounded more like a curse than anything else, "Hear me Snake! My spirit will be watching you!"

As the ravens flew away, Snake walked to the end of the warehouse to the far door and finally turned to see nothing remaining of Raven's body except for blood and his massive gun. Snake merely stared at the sight and lit himself a cigarette until his Codec went off.

"_Snake, it's me."_

"Master Miller."

"_It's about Naomi. But you need to turn your monitor off."_ Was the warning from his distant support member. It was too late however when Campbell was shown to be listening in to the conversation.

"_What about Naomi?"_ Campbell asked, getting a low curse from Miller in return.

"Colonel is Naomi there?" Snake asked.

"_No she's away."_ Campbell replied, _"She's taking a short rest. Now what is this about Naomi?"_

"_Okay…"_ Miller eventually relented on keeping it a secret, _"Maybe we should let the Colonel in on this too. Basically Dr. Naomi Hunter isn't Dr. Naomi Hunter at all. I thought her story of her background sounded kind of fishy, so I checked it out."_ Miller revealed.

"_And?"_ Campbell asked impatiently. The woman was on his submarine working on this mission that had so much on the line, these were things he needed to know.

With that, Miller kept speaking, _"There is an actual Naomi Hunter, or should I say there _was_ one. But she's definitely not the woman we know. The real Naomi Hunter disappeared in the Middle East. Our Naomi must have somehow obtained her identification papers."_

"_So then who is she really?"_ Campbell asked.

"_She must be some kind of spy… maybe sent to sabotage this entire operation."_

Campbell's paranoia along with the confines of the submarine were not an easy combination, _"So you're saying she's with the terrorists?"_

"I don't want to think about it either Colonel…" Snake admitted, "But she is working for FOXHOUND."

"_So you think she had some part in the uprising?"_ Campbell tried to speculate. It was hard to believe. Naomi was usually such a pleasant woman.

Miller took this moment to interject again with his own two cents, _"Or she could be working with some different group altogether."_

"_Different group?"_ Campbell said as if he was aware of who else Naomi could possibly be working for, _"It couldn't be…"_

"_Place her under arrest."_ Miller more or less ordered, ignoring Colonel Campbell's shocked response, _"She needs to be arrested and interrogated to find out who she's with."_

The point Miller was trying to stress was easy for Campbell to see though, _"If she's one of their spies we could be in some big trouble."_ Somehow he didn't sound like he meant Naomi being a spy for the terrorists, more like a spy for someone else.

"_Is she in on any vital secrets or something?"_ Miller asked in a rather pushy manner, getting silence from Campbell, _"Does this have anything to do with the strange deaths of the DARPA Chief and the ArmsTech President?"_ Once again there was no definite answer from Campbell, _"Either way… we cannot allow her to participate any further in this mission."_

"_Wait a minute."_ Campbell said, stopping Miller's train of conversation, _"Without her we can't complete this mission."_ The more he heard him talk the more Campbell started getting a little thought behind Naruto's theory on Master Miller not being quite himself. If it only took Naruto one conversation with the man to figure it out then that had to mean something.

"I knew it!" Snake said in regards to Campbell over the whole Naomi situation, "You're still hiding something!" If someone in their camp was a traitor it didn't matter how important they were to the mission, you cut that loss and moved along. Yet again there was more to the situation then there appeared to be.

"_Give me some more time."_ Campbell pleaded to keep everything together, _"I'll try to get it out of her myself."_

"_Hurry then."_ Miller spoke up again, _"We've got to figure out who she is and what she's doing here."_

"_I understand."_ Campbell said in a rather defeated voice, _"Snake give me some time."_

"I don't have any time left for you…" Snake said, finally fed up with everything being handed to him as far as the bullshit went. It seemed like the only person on this whole mission contributing any input that was actually on his side was Master Miller as far as he was concerned. He opened the doors that Raven gave him the security card to and continued on with his mission. He didn't want to hear anymore from anyone that was 'on his team'.

* * *

><p><strong>Okay by my estimation, and I could be off depending on the extent of writing I do, next chapter should bring the apex conflicts and the like. <strong>

**For those that care of have wondered at this point, I skip the bulk of Snake's fights because… well they're video game boss fights dude. Even if you don't know what happens in the Metal Gear storyline the boss fights are kind of in the form of a pattern. There's a certain way you have to beat the bosses. That's kind of hard to write and make seem fresh. For those of you that have actually played the game, you already know what happens, after all, you did it (Yeah! High-fives all around for having done it yourselves!), as did I.**

**But just try to imagine explaining in even half-realistic terms just how Snake beat Psycho Mantis…**

**And you see my first conundrum. Fourth-wall breaching like a motherfucker.**

**Plus I don't feel like regurgitating things that a lot of people already know about unless it's really important or totally epic. That's understandable right?**

**Anyway, chapter done, I need to go get ready for work. Kenchi out.**


	11. Against the Grain

I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I am taking myself hostage for the ransom of partial ownership of either franchise. Kishimoto or Kojima have six days to come up with a compromise to give me what I want or else. You don't even know what I'm willing to do to myself… This threat is real.

Don't ruin a young man's life because of greed. I will fuck myself up. You have no idea what kind of hell I can bring me.

**Chapter 11: Against the Grain**

* * *

><p>Having just entered the first cargo room at the entrance of the underground maintenance area, Naruto frowned as he went through his supplies, "Okay I have two grenades left… three magazines for the MP5K… Five magazines for the SOCOM… I have most of the magazine left for the Dragunov and two extras." He blew a raspberry, "Yeah, that's not going to do me a lot of good down here."<p>

"At least you've got weapons and bullets…" Meryl grumbled at hearing Naruto complain about his steadily depleting stockpile of ammunition, "I don't even have any extra ammunition for my Desert Eagle anymore."

"That's a shit gun for you anyway." Naruto told her as he went through his other supplies. Because of this he didn't notice the glare she leveled on him, "The damn thing jams too easily, it's too loud to be functional for something like this, it's heavy, and the recoil would kick your ass." He looked up from taking inventory to look at Meryl, "And yours looked brand new when I saw it this morning, have you even shot that thing before?"

"No." Meryl admitted with red cheeks at getting her attempted use of a new gun dressed down by a guy her age. The only time she had gotten to actually use her Desert Eagle was when Psycho Mantis took over her body and made her shoot at Snake, "I've been using the FAMAS the entire time right up until Snake and I fought Mantis. What does it matter anyway? I point a gun at someone and fire, then they die. It's that easy."

"Not when the person you're fighting is actually good at what they do." Naruto responded with a chiding look on his face, "You should make sure you're good with whatever weapon you want to use before you wind up using it in the field. Stupid stuff like that gets you killed." He would know. He had been shot enough times to fill an assault rifle magazine with the number of bullets that had been in him, mostly because of faulty practices that he had mostly been weaned off of by this point.

"Yeah, well I have to-." Meryl started to say before a sound of clattering occurred elsewhere in the room. Alerted by the noise, Meryl pulled the very Desert Eagle they had been conversing over and fired in the direction of the noise.

She missed her shot and a cry of alarm preceded electronic rippling, revealing a frightened Otacon, glasses slipping off of his face and a stunned look of fear pasted on his features, 'That was the third time I've almost been killed tonight! Maybe I should stop using this stealth camo for all the good it's doing me?' He thought as he looked at Naruto and Meryl nervously.

"You see?" Naruto commented amusedly, forcing Meryl to lower her gun, "You can't hit the broad side of a barn with that thing if you don't get time to aim." She pouted at him, but Naruto merely rolled his eyes, "You're lucky there's no guards stationed around all of the useless crap in here or they'd be all over chasing us out of here right now." He then gestured towards Otacon, "This is Dr. Hal Emmerich, but he likes to be called Otacon I guess. He's been helping Snake out for a while."

"It wasn't _that_ big of a deal." Meryl tried to defend, though even she knew that argument about her attempted shot had no legs. Not only was the gun louder than Naruto's SOCOM pistols, even without their suppressors, the room had an echo… her ears were still ringing from the shot.

Ignoring that weak statement, Naruto walked past all of the crates and junk in the room to get over to Otacon, "What are you doing here? The guards down below are going to be out for blood, I wouldn't risk going down there if I were you, even with the stealth camouflage."

Otacon pointed beneath their feet, alluding towards the underground portion of the base, "Oh, Snake's already been through here. Yeah, the snowfield was free and clear so he was able to get right over here after getting out of the communication towers. Last thing I heard he beat Vulcan Raven in the storage room down below."

Naruto raised an eyebrow and frowned, "And by 'beat' you mean 'killed' don't you?" Otacon rubbed the back of his neck and nodded, "Don't say 'beat' when you mean 'killed'. There's a difference." He didn't mean to sound so harsh over it, it really didn't matter that much. It was just that other than turning his back on him and starting the insurrection with Liquid, Raven had always done right by Naruto, he never had a particular problem with the shaman. It honestly sucked that the man was dead, but Snake owed neither him nor Raven any favors, and Naruto had decided that Raven had picked his side a long time ago after what Sniper Wolf told him.

"Sorry." Otacon said in case he had gotten on Naruto's bad side. Any guy that could face down an entire platoon of Genome Soldiers and still be able to walk around and fight wasn't anyone he wanted to risk upsetting, "But Snake's really close to the hangar with Metal Gear REX, I'm surprised that Sniper Wolf hasn't tried to stop him yet." The man sounded rather happy that this hadn't occurred.

Naruto seemed to perk back up at hearing that Snake had more or less cleared the way down to the lower levels, as did Meryl, "That's great!" Meryl told Otacon, "This whole nightmare is almost over." She then looked at Naruto, "He does have a point though. I would have figured that Sniper Wolf would have tried to stop either Snake or you by now." After knowing who shot her, Meryl wasn't looking forward to another run-in with Wolf.

"I handled her already." Naruto said calmly, informing both of them that Wolf wouldn't be a factor in any more of the evening's proceedings, "She's not going to be fighting anyone."

"You?" Otacon said in a questioning tone of voice. Naruto fought against Sniper Wolf and won? What about whatever it was between them? He knew that he hadn't been imagining the camaraderie that the two had. Neither of them acted like they did with the other around anyone else in FOXHOUND. And he could just talk about going against someone that close to him that easily? And what did he mean by 'he handled her'?

Naruto just gave the man a dry look, "Yeah, me. Who else would have done it? Why does everyone think that I can't fight any of FOXHOUND? I'm not their damn intern or something." He then thought about that last statement, "Okay, technically I was, but that's not the point."

That wasn't even what Otacon had been implying. He was wondering how Naruto even brought himself to fight against her in the first place. If they did indeed fight, and he was the one still standing tall at the end of it then he would be remiss if he refrained from asking Naruto the question that made him queasy just thinking about it, "Did you kill-?"

"Like I said..." Naruto abruptly cut him off before he finished asking what he knew the man wanted to know more than anything else, "I handled it." He spoke with finality. He knew that he didn't kill Wolf. No one else knew it but Johnny and he was gone at this point. Things were better that way. The less people who knew that those two had gotten away, the better things would be in the long run.

Otacon didn't even know that Naruto could sound that cold when saying things. Even though he knew the blonde was a soldier he just didn't act like it a lot of the time; he admittedly did question the young man's being at Shadow Moses Island in the first place with Next-Generation Special Forces and FOXHOUND, people that seemed to take things more seriously. Now hearing that tone of voice from him on the Sniper Wolf matter and seeing the rather hard look in his eyes, it made him realize that this was the same person that fought off upwards of twenty soldiers by himself, the same person that blew up the inside of a tank hangar as a diversion.

And in his mind that left no doubt as to the fate of one Sniper Wolf. He had seen Naruto do those things nearly up close and personal firsthand. If he was there and Wolf hadn't been seen since attacking Meryl then that only meant that he had truly dealt with her. He knew in his heart that Naruto had killed Sniper Wolf… Naruto had done the very thing that he had been trying to convince Snake not to do if he crossed her path again.

"Why did you have to do it?" Otacon asked Naruto weakly as his fists shook out of anger, "Why did you have to kill Wolf? She was a good person! She didn't deserve to die! I thought you were friends! I thought you were more than friends! How could you kill her?"

He wished that attacking Naruto would have resulted in some sort of positive outcome for him. He refrained from doing so because he knew that attacking Naruto would get him very hurt very quickly. The way Naruto's attire and physical appearance looked he had been in fights all day and night, and he probably wouldn't have found a 135 pound scientist that had been skulking about instead of engaging in actual fighting trying to throttle him for defending himself and saving the country very amusing.

So all Otacon could do at this point was just let silent tears stream down his face as he dropped to his knees where the bawling began. He had never even gotten to speak to Wolf again before discovering her fate after having fought Naruto, "I was in love with her…" He muttered out through his crying.

Meryl could only look from the scientist that had broken down on the spot to Naruto who looked back at her and shook his head, sort of in an 'ask me or him later' gesture. Now was not the time to try and dredge up why Otacon was acting this way just because she didn't know. It obviously wasn't important to what was going on if Naruto didn't just tell her there. Still there was something wrong with watching a 25 year old man cry like that in front of her… and she didn't really know what to do about it.

On the other hand, Naruto didn't really like leading the guy on like that, trying to make it seem as if he had killed Sniper Wolf. He knew a few weeks back that he was into her, but Otacon knowing anything about what he had really done with her by handing her off to Johnny to keep safe and to get away from the base wouldn't have benefitted those two.

After this was over Otacon wouldn't be a criminal. Sniper Wolf and possibly Johnny would be, it was as simple as that. The fact that he thought she was dead was safer all around for her, since in this case at least one person believed that she was and would say as much when asked about it later.

It wasn't like he lied and said that he had killed her either, he just allowed Otacon to make his own assumption on the matter. He was never really good at lying, he never particularly liked it, but he could lead people on to make them believe something like no one's business.

Still, he felt like a real heel for putting the man in that state, especially for no good reason even if it was for the right purpose. Naruto looked over at Meryl, "Alright that's enough. I can't let you really go any further than this Meryl. I promised someone that I would keep you safe, and going down to where REX is definitely isn't safe."

"What?" Meryl cried out indignantly. She had come all of this way, had been taken over by a psychic, had gotten shot in three of her limbs by a sniper, dealt with all of the crap that had been going on since the base had been taken over, and here she wasn't even going to be able to see it out to the end? She didn't like that at all, "You think I'm just going to stay back because it's not going to be safe down there? That's bullshit!"

Naruto gave her a dry look, "Metal Gear is a 30-foot tank with legs that has machine guns, missile launchers and is going to be guarded and probably used by Revolver Ocelot or Liquid Snake. Neither of them are going to be bad at driving it, I'm sure. And then there's also the nuclear warhead part that I didn't talk about. Do you want to be around in case we set the thing off by accident?"

"...REX isn't that little. It's around fifty to sixty feet now." Otacon chimed in, still sniffling back tears, "REX was designed to be better than the last designs that came before it. The missiles are homing and anti-tank, the guns all freely rotate, and it has a high energy laser meant to deal with close range threats. It's feet are even powerful weapons."

After that little rundown of exactly what Metal Gear REX had to offer, Naruto just stared at Meryl with wide-eyes, something she did as well. He knew it was going to be huge, he knew that the weapons were going to be imposing… this on the other hand was ridiculous. But that more than anything told him that she definitely wasn't going down there with him.

Snake had already fought two different examples of earlier models. He had taken the measure of the metal behemoths before on his own. If anyone would be able to bring REX down then it would be him if push came to shove.

Naruto on the other hand could at least run interference and keep it off-guard. Maybe he could find something useful while he was down there to help take it out, but he wasn't holding his breath. In any case he was at least fast and agile enough to give whoever was piloting the machine fits in trying to catch him if he could pester them enough.

Neither of the two could risk someone going down there without a clue on what they were doing on how to fight REX nor could they let someone that didn't have the skill and attributes to pose a threat to the weapon. Meryl only had her Desert Eagle with its current magazine in it of which she had already fired a shot. She needed more bullets to even be effective on getting down there in the first place. Once she was there and if a fight with REX became inevitable she would only be a liability. She wasn't as fast as Naruto or Snake, she didn't have the weaponry needed to deal with REX, and she didn't know how to help without hurting the situation. One of them might get hurt or killed trying to watch out for her.

"Yeah, you're staying here." Naruto told her, and she actually didn't argue the point, something he took note of. He gestured down to Otacon who had taken up crying over Sniper Wolf again, "Make sure he stays alive and find a way for you guys to get out of here with Snake once everything ends."

A nod from Meryl was the reply. She wanted to be helpful, but even she had to know that against REX she would be no good. And they hadn't addressed how they were going to get out once everything was over so that was another good point as to why she didn't need to go down there.

With everything set as to how the dominoes would fall from here on out, Naruto turned to head deeper into the underground facility before he was stopped by Otacon, "Wait." Naruto turned to face him as he asked his question, "How could you do it? How could you go and do what you did to Wolf? The time you spent together, what you two had, didn't that mean anything to you when the time came? Did you even feel anything at all?"

Yeah if he had actually killed her he might have, but he hadn't killed her, which meant that he could sell his answer to Otacon's question coldly and put an end to the topic, "I could do it because it was what had to happen. She picked her side, she turned on me, she knew that we would have to fight if that's how things went. She wanted it that way. Before the battle ended, I don't know, maybe I made her realize that it was a mistake." He let out a sigh, "I did my job… that's all there is to it." He then started to walk away again.

"People your age shouldn't be speaking like that…" Otacon said quietly, though whether he knew it or not Naruto could still hear him, "It's not right… that you can just write off fighting and killing friends as your job. Who can live with themselves like that?" He shook his head slowly as Naruto kept walking away, "…You're a monster."

Meryl turned to stare at the scientist in shock as he kept crying silently and then looked up at Naruto who had frozen in his tracks before he finally replied to Otacon's words, "Maybe." He said just as quietly as he continued forward.

XxX

(With Snake – Underground Maintenance Base – En Route to REX's Hangar)

The things that he had been finding out about REX just made stopping this Metal Gear seem more and more important. Not only could the thing fire nuclear warheads, it could do so without the warheads actually being rockets. By use of the rail gun on the machine's shoulder, REX could fire nuclear weapons that wouldn't technically be missiles. They also wouldn't show up on any kind of radar. So the people being fired on wouldn't know about it until the attack had happened.

As if there weren't enough reasons to make sure that this thing never got fired up.

The secret to the PAL key needed to override REX that he had gotten from ArmsTech President Baker… It turned out that there weren't three separate keys. There was only one, but it had to be used in different situations. Once while normal, once while frozen, and once while overly heated.

He had just done the latter, the last code that Snake needed to put in, and he was currently on his way back to the hangar and the control room to do such and put this mission to rest, riding a cargo elevator down the long way back through the depths of much of the base.

It was a long way down, and the elevator moved slowly. There was nothing to do to kill time but to make sure that his equipment was all ready and set to go once the elevator stopped and let him off. Luckily for the sake of his boredom, his Codec went off, only for him to find that it was Naomi's frequency, _"Snake can you hear me?"_

He hadn't expected to hear from her again after all that had happened and all that he had been told, "Naomi, what the hell?"

"_Campbell and the others are busy right now. I'm on a different Codec."_ She explained, as to why she was speaking so lowly and why she even had clear access to speak to him in the first place.

Snake decided to get right to the point and stab at the heart of the matter he really wanted to get to, "Naomi is what the Colonel says true?" He really wanted her answer to be a resounding no. He had enough problems tonight to hear yes.

But his luck wasn't even close to being that good, _"…Yes."_ Of course everything was true, because he didn't have enough people in front of him trying to kill him, he needed the people watching his back to try and do it too, _"But not everything I said was a lie. I don't actually know my real name or what my parents even looked like. I bought all of my current identification, but my reason for getting into genetics was true."_

"Because you want to know yourself, right?" Snake remembered the conversation they had when he had been captured and imprisoned by Ocelot.

"_That's right. I want to know where I came from, my age, my race… anything I can really."_ Why she was telling him this he didn't know, but he felt compelled to listen, _"I was found in Rhodesia sometime in the 80's, an orphan."_

"You mean what's now known as Zimbabwe?"

"_Yes. Rhodesia was owned by England until 1965 and there were lots of Indian laborers around. That's probably where I got my skin color from but I'm not even sure about that."_ Her tone was kind of somber, as if not knowing these things and then admitting such saddened her.

Snake shook his head, not that anyone could even see it, "Naomi you're too worried about the past. Isn't it enough to understand who you are now?" If Snake kept dwelling on his own past then he might have been driven mad by this point.

That seemed to just irritate her, _"Why should I try to understand who I am now? No one else tries to understand me. I was alone for so long, until I met my big brother and 'him'."_ She had before alluded to a brother much older than her that had taken care of her before dying. Apparently they hadn't even been related by blood according to what she said.

"Your big brother?" Snake didn't like where this was going. If she was about to talk about this big brother of hers then that meant he had something to do with Snake, and he never really liked when people referred to one other man as 'him'. It just never had any positive connotation for him.

"_Yes. My big brother Frank Jaeger."_

"What?" Damn, he called that one from a mile away. Gray Fox's real name was Frank Jaeger. The same Gray Fox that was running around Shadow Moses in that cyborg exoskeleton, the same Gray Fox that he had blown to bits in Zanzibar Land after a fist fight in a minefield, "No. Gray Fox?"

Naomi's tone turned reminiscent as she began to talk again, _"He was just a young soldier when he picked me up near the Zambezi River. I was half-dead from starvation and he shared his rations with me." _An accusing tint entered her speech, _"Frank Jaeger, the man you destroyed, was my brother and my only family."_ This was just really not Snake's day at all. He just couldn't catch a break on any fronts at all, _"We survived that hell together, Frank and I. He protected me. He's my one connection… the only connection I have to my past."_

"-And he brought you to America…" Snake tried to finish for her. How else would she have gotten here?

"_No."_ Naomi corrected him, _"I was in Mozambique when 'he' came."_

And by now, when people around Snake used the word 'he' and 'him' too much around him as if it were taboo to speak the person's name, ever since 1999, he knew exactly who they were referring to, "And by 'he' you mean Big Boss don't you?"

"_Yes."_

Crap. That meant that he had been the one that had done the damage to both Gray Fox and Big Boss… people that were apparently important to her.

"_He brought us here to this 'land of freedom', this America, but then he and my brother went back to Africa to continue the war… and that's when it happened."_ He knew what she was going to say. He had to fight them both in Zanzibar Land, _"You killed my benefactor and sent my brother home a cripple. I vowed revenge and joined FOXHOUND because I knew it was my best chance to meet you, and I prayed for the day that I would."_

"And obviously your prayers were answered." Now that the shock from the revelation started wearing off, Snake started looking at this as he would anything else; as just another person that wanted to kill him.

Bring it on.

"_I waited two long years after joining FOXHOUND…"_

"To kill me? Is that all you cared about?" Didn't any of these people get that it was his fucking job? It wasn't personal. If he could have finished that mission without killing Gray Fox then he would have, unfortunately there was no such option.

"_That's right."_ Apparently Naomi had no sense of giving quarter for the life of a soldier, _"You were all I thought about for two years, like some kind of twisted obsession."_ She finished with a small laugh, as if she now found the whole thing rather silly.

"Do you still hate me?" Snake asked. She had been through all of this with him, she had seen how he lived while on missions like this, how he had no choice but to do these things sometimes. Zanzibar Land was his most clusterfucked mission ever, not counting the one he was currently on. It was the one that had broken him.

"_Not exactly…"_ Naomi replied almost hesitantly, _"I was partly wrong about you…"_

"What about Liquid and the others?" Did the way she felt go any further than him? Did she have any vested interest in actually stopping the nuke from being launched, from Metal Gear REX being activated? Things were so close to being complete, would she really pull something that would keep him from finishing things up?

"_I'll have my revenge on them too."_ She more or less assured Snake of the fact that none of the terrorist leaders would walk away from this. Liquid and Ocelot were the only ones left at this point anyway.

But hearing that she was putting down members of FOXHOUND and that the way she felt didn't stop with just him he had to ask her something else, "Naomi, you didn't kill that doctor too did you? The one that used Gray Fox for the genome experiments."

"_Dr. Clark? No that was my brother. Afterwards I covered it up and helped him hide out."_ Naomi admitted, _"I even helped him ensure that the young man he had with him was kept clear of anyone discovering his time in captivity as well."_ She let out another small laugh, _"I never knew that the same boy that I wound up getting to a medical facility to lay low was Naruto Uzumaki. I didn't know what had become of him until I met him again. He was actually very useful in designing something very specific to FOXDIE even if he never knows of it. But then it was never his problem in the first place."_

"So you actually knew more about Naruto than you let on?" Snake prodded further on the topic, "And that ninja-. I mean Gray Fox… he's come here to kill me?"

"_Not much more than anyone else knows, but yes I do know Naruto a little better than anyone else knew. And I don't think Frank is here to kill you. I think he just came here to fight you."_ Well at least there was that going for him. Gray Fox wasn't there to kill him, _"I wasn't sure before but now I think I understand. A final battle with you is all he lives for, I'm sure of it."_

"Oh Fox no…" That was no way to exist and Snake knew it. Such an arbitrary purpose for staying alive, even for a soldier that had lived in battle was no good whatsoever, "Naomi tell me something."

"_About FOXDIE?"_ It took long enough in her mind for him to get to worrying about himself and the virus he had been injected with, _"FOXDIE is a type of retrovirus that only targets and kills specific people. First it infects the macrophages in the victim's body. FOXDIE contains smart enzymes created through protein engineering. They're programmed to respond to specific genetic patterns in the cells."_

What a nasty little bug, "So they recognize the target's DNA?" Snake was no stranger to biological warfare and the like, but that was absurd.

"_Yes. And they respond by becoming active, and using the macrophages they begin creating TNF epsilon."_ The sound of silence over the line indicated that Snake had no idea what that was, _"It's a type of cytokine, a peptide that causes cells to die. It is carried along the bloodstream to the heart where it attaches to the TNF receptors in the heart cells."_

Hearing heart was all he needed to know, "-And they cause a heart attack?"

"_The heart cells undergo shock and suffer an extreme apoptosis, and then… the victim dies."_

"And you must have programmed that thing to kill me too, right?" Why wouldn't she have? She wanted her revenge, so why not use her miniature Frankenstein monster to take him down? And the silence he got in return was the only answer he needed once again, which begged only one last question, "Do I still have time?" Once again he did not receive an answer, "Naomi, I don't blame you for wanting me dead. But I can't go yet, I still have a job to do."

"…_There's still something you need to know."_ Naomi finally spoke, hesitance clear in her voice, _"Snake, I'm not the one who made the decision to use FOXDIE. You were injected with FOXDIE as a part of this operation. I just wanted to let you know that."_ Snake didn't say anything. How are you supposed to respond to something like that? Having secrets kept from you about your mission is one thing, but having a deadly virus intentionally injected into you was just unexplainable, _"No, that's not the whole truth… The real thing I wanted to tell you was-."_

At that moment, footsteps could be heard running over the Codec from Naomi's end before Campbell's voice came over, muffled from the background, _"Hey! What are you doing?"_ There were sounds of a short struggle and the line being disrupted before Campbell came up,_ "Snake, I can't allow Naomi to make anymore unauthorized transmissions. Naomi's been removed from this operation."_

"What?" Why did it have to happen right then? What was she going to say to him before they took her away? "What happened to Naomi? What did she mean when she said that FOXDIE was a part of this operation? Colonel let me talk to her!"

"_I won't."_ Campbell said with finality, _"She's under arrest."_

"Damn it…" Snake muttered angrily, "You really did double-cross me…"

"_There's no time for that right now Snake!"_ Campbell insisted heatedly, _"Right now your job is to stop Metal Gear! Okay Snake?"_ And with that he hung up, leaving Snake alone to stew in his own thoughts.

With all conversations done, Snake still had to wait on that long elevator to reach the lower portion of the base. Things had gotten progressively worse… all Snake knew was that when all of this was over if he lived long enough afterwards he was really going to disappear. This was the final straw period. What was even the point of loyalty anymore if he was just going to be used as if he didn't matter?

He thought these things to himself until a rather heavy thud landed on the elevator behind him. Snake whipped around and set himself in a ready fighting stance until he saw who it was that landed behind him, "God kid, don't do that. I thought you were another one of those stealth camo idiots." He said upon seeing Naruto, "How did you even get here?"

Naruto pointed up and then at the metal wire wrapped around his taped right fist, "I anchored a kunai up top and just dropped while holding onto my wire. It's like rappelling only way more dangerous and stupid." He started unwrapping his fist and shook it out, "Also if I wasn't wearing this tape and hadn't bundled the wire so well I probably would have cut right through most of my arm."

"That's lovely…" Snake said sarcastically before letting out a groan, "Where's Meryl? I thought you were going to go get her."

"Done that… Now she's with Otacon who's having a mini freak-out right now." Naruto saw Snake's questioning glace and he decided to elaborate, "I fought and beat Sniper Wolf and told him when he started asking about her."

'Damn, that's pretty impressive.' Snake had to admit that fighting Wolf was not on his list of things he needed to do today. So now he owed Naruto for getting Meryl and himself out of lockup, but now for dealing with one of his main threats. No wonder he never ran into her again, "So wait, you're actually going to help me deal with this personally?"

Naruto shrugged, "I'm here aren't I? Of course if you actually want to do this alone then I can head right back up." He said with a grin. He wasn't going back up top even if Snake actually did ask him to. Getting not even the usual roll of the eyes for his attitude from the elder soldier, Naruto frowned, "Hey is there something wrong Snake?"

"I don't even know where to start or where to begin…" Snake said in return, noticing that Naruto did actually seem to be somewhat concerned, "Don't worry about any of it though. I'll still be able to finish the mission, don't you worry about it." There was no quitting anything now, no matter how he felt about it. He didn't have the option.

Looking over at Snake who seemed to have enough equipment to take on half of the soldiers stationed elsewhere in the base, Naruto commented on Snake's state of mind, "I'm not really that worried about the mission Snake. But if you don't want to talk about just what the big problem is, I'll let it go."

The elevator then finally reached the level that REX's hangar sat on and let them off, letting the both of them rush through the rest of the base to the target.

XxX

(REX's Hangar)

"You've got to be kidding me…" Naruto said with a twitching eye as he stared up at what he saw to be the Metal Gear REX model that was the focal point of all of the mayhem that had been taking place, "Who builds crap like this?" He asked dubiously.

It looked like a t-rex dinosaur made of metal. The entire frame of the machine was heavily armored. It did indeed stand just as high off of the ground as Otacon had said that it did, it was also more massive than Naruto had been expecting. The two massive reverse-joint legs were just as wide as at least three or four of him. On its shoulder, looking past all of the other imposing weaponry, sat the miniaturized, yet still rather large rail gun that would launch nuclear weapons once everything was all set and ready to go for .

Snake noticed Naruto's slack-jawed stare and nodded," That's Metal Gear for you. Designers really don't mess around when they make these things." Still, when he had seen it the first time he had a similar reaction to it. It was just the fact that REX was an upgrade from the last two models he had seen that he had gotten over it quickly.

Naruto still recovered though, though he was still in awe that people could create something like this. If it operated as dangerously as it looked at first glance then he needed to put that thing down. Hell, the portable weapons that Snake had with him wouldn't even do the metal monster any damage. It was too heavily armored. Oh well… "Meh… Shukaku was still bigger." Shukaku didn't have guided missiles though and couldn't nuke a country from entire continents away though.

Snake let out a grunt before he began to climb the maintenance balconies to make his way back to the control room high up on the third floor against the wall of the massive hangar. He obviously knew what he was there to do, to input the PAL key and bring all of this to a close.

On the other hand, Naruto just took notice of the fact that for REX being the single most important aspect of Shadow Moses, there wasn't a soul guarding it. There wasn't anyone anywhere, not even hiding anywhere ludicrous that he would choose to use to keep himself hidden from sight. So it was time to take advantage of that little fact.

Naruto started directly scaling REX to get to the cockpit at the mouth. Looking inside to find out if he could have stolen this thing and actually used it if Snake wasn't about to deactivate it forever, he felt clueless and out of place as he did so. And he thought flying a chopper was a big deal. He had no idea where to even start about possibly driving REX. Even if the thing was turned on he doubted there was a tutorial system inside of the thing.

"Wait…" Naruto said to himself, scratching his head as he looked into the cockpit, "Why are there six petals if there are only four directions?" Yeah, Liquid was right on the money when it came to keeping him out of the hangar for all of those months. If he had access to REX, even if he still didn't know about the insurrection, he would have been trying to learn how to drive it anyway just because he could. Then he would know how to drive it for sure.

On the other hand letting him see REX might have been a better diversion than keeping him up top at the base, doing nothing for as long as they did.

"…Bastard knew I would want to drive it… Can't anyone even let me steal anything the right way anymore?" Naruto muttered angrily before jumping to the top of REX and sitting on the top of it to wait for Snake to finish.

XxX

(With Snake – REX's Hangar – Control Room)

Snake inserted the final form of the PAL key into the necessary slot provided in the computer to end everything and waited for the confirmation announcement that everything had been shut down.

"_PAL code number three confirmed."_ The computer stated, putting a small smile on Snake's face. He was smiling right up until the computer spoke again, _"PAL code entry complete… detonation code activated."_ An alert then went off sounding throughout the entire hangar.

"No!" Snake exclaimed, banging on the computer as if that would take back what had just been declared, "Why?" He had done everything right! He had gotten the key down there just like Baker told him he would need to, he had put the key in three times, so why was the detonation still going to happen?

"_Ready for launch."_ A startled Naruto stood up and jumped off of the massive Metal Gear as it seemed to kickstart and rumble violently.

Naruto landed near Snake's place in the control room and looked over inside through the observation window, banging on the glass of the room, "Snake what happened? Were we too late? What about the PAL key? Wasn't that supposed to stop it?"

"I don't know!" Snake yelled back, "I just don't know! I deactivated it! I know I did!"

"_Thank you Snake."_ He heard over his Codec. It was Master Miller's Codec frequency, _"Now the detonation code is completed. Nothing can stop Metal Gear now."_

"Master what's going on?" Snake asked.

"Master?" Naruto repeated questioningly before gritting his teeth angrily and trying to use his own Codec to get in on the conversation himself.

He tapped in just as Miller continued to speak, _"You found the key and even activated the warhead for us too. I really must express my gratitude. I'm sorry to have involved you in that silly shape memory alloy business with the PAL key."_ Miller had never sounded so damn smug before. That wasn't like him at all, Naruto knew he was right about sending someone to the man's house.

"What are you talking about?" Snake growled out. He thought this was over. Why couldn't anything ever be cut and dry?

"_We weren't able to learn the DARPA Chief's code."_ Miller said, sounding very victorious over the whole matter, _"Even with Mantis' psychic powers he couldn't read his mind. And then Ocelot accidentally killed him during the physical interrogation. In the end we weren't able to launch the nuclear device and we were all getting a little worried. Without the threat of a nuclear strike, our demands would never be met. Without the detonation codes we had to find some other way, and that's when we decided that you might prove useful Snake. I thought we could get the info from you, so I disguised Decoy Octopus as the DARPA Chief… unfortunately he didn't survive the encounter thanks to FOXDIE."_

'So that was what killed Octopus.' Naruto thought to himself before blinking in confusion, "Wait… what the hell is FOXDIE?" He asked out loud.

Snake couldn't believe it. He had been used _again_. Not only by his own comrades but by the enemy too, and they were all getting what they wanted out of him, "So you had this planned from the very beginning? Just to get me to input the detonation code!"

Miller just started to laugh out loud over the connection, _"You didn't really think you made it this far on your own did you?"_ He taunted cruelly, _"In any case, launch preparations are complete. Once the world glimpses the power of this weapon the White House will have no choice but to surrender the FOXDIE vaccine to me. Their ace-in-the-hole is useless now."_

"Ace-in-the-hole?" Naruto said questioningly. Wasn't sending Snake in the big plan? What was supposed to happen if he didn't pull the mission off? He didn't get the point of things, "Wasn't Snake the entire focal point of whatever the higher-ups wanted to do?"

"_Still just a child. You have no idea of what's going on around you."_ Miller said amusedly in reference to Naruto, getting an angry grunt out of the young man, _"The Pentagon's plan to use Snake was already successful back in the torture room."_ He then let out a cackle, _"Snake you're the most important part of all of this and you don't even know! You poor fool."_

"Who are you anyway?" Snake just wanted to know who this person was so that he could put a few rounds into his kneecaps. Nothing major. It wasn't like this mission wasn't grating heavily on his nerves and he needed some kind of release. Nothing like that at all.

"_I'll tell you everything you want to know… if you come to where I am that is."_

Snake growled lowly, "And where are you?"

"_Very close by…"_

At that moment, Campbell's voice chimed in once again over the conversation, _"Snake that's not Master Miller! Naruto was right the entire time!"_

"_You're too late Campbell."_ 'Miller's' voice taunted in a sing-song manner.

"_Master Miller's body was just discovered at his home! He's been dead for at least three days!" _Hearing that gave Naruto a feeling of just being punched in the stomach. He had to sink against the wall to process that thought. He kind of knew that it would be the case, no amount of optimism would take that niggling thought from the back of his mind. However the reality was much different from just thinking about it being a possibility, _"My Codec signal with him was jammed, but Mei Ling just said that his transmissions have been coming from inside of the base! Snake this entire time you've been talking to-!"_

"_Me…"_ Suddenly Master Miller's voice took on a British accent, _"…My dear brother…"_

"Liquid!" Snake yelled angrily.

"_You've served your purpose…"_ Liquid stated smugly, _"You may die now."_ At that moment the doors to the lab Snake had been in locked and gas started filtrating into the room.

Naruto saw the gas beginning to fill the room and started punching at the windows, unable to break them. He pulled out his SOCOM and fired at it only for nothing to happen. The glass was at least bulletproof in strength. He heard footsteps on the metal catwalk around the side of the control room out in the hangar and saw his prime target for even being there in the first place… and he had more of a reason now to kill him than he ever had before, "Liquid you're dead!" He yelled in anger as he jumped off of the side catwalk onto the head of REX.

Seeing Naruto standing on top of REX, Liquid turned his FAMAS towards Naruto and began to fire at him, missing when Naruto jumped off and landed on the maintenance balconies surrounding it, "You could work with me Naruto." Liquid said to him once Naruto took cover around the backside of REX to buy himself some kind of reprieve from Liquid's assault rifle, "You could get all of those questions you have answered. You could live in a world where you would always be wanted, always be needed! I'm doing this for men like us! The fighters! Trying to make a world where we're valued!"

"I already had that you bastard!"

From the very top of REX, two Naruto clones had their MP5K's pointed at Liquid while from both sides of the maintenance balconies beneath two more clones provided more well-aimed fire from their SOCOM pistols as the clones up top tried to focus their automatic fire to corral Liquid and give the pistol shooting clones an easier chance to hit him, "Master Miller was the only man that ever meant a damn thing to me in this world!" The original Naruto shouted angrily. It was clear that the real one wasn't among the clones because of the lack of emotion on the clones' faces, "He was like family to me! And you think I care enough about my place in this world to let you use me the way you used the rest of FOXHOUND?"

Sick of being shot at, Liquid placed a pair of grenades in the pockets with the pins drawn out and threw the heavy trench coat at Naruto's clones atop REX, rocking them with the explosion and dispelling them, even if they weren't caught in the explosion to keep Naruto from taking further phantom damage.

Liquid smirked at seeing the copies of Naruto destroyed, but heard a yell mixed with pain and anger coming from behind him, turning around to meet a fist to the face from the original Naruto that made him drop his gun.

This would mark the second time today that Naruto felt the pain of being caught in an explosion by way of his clones, only this time it didn't hurt nearly as much as the first time. And that left Naruto free to attempt to vent his anger on the one place that it mattered with the only weapon he felt like using at the moment, Liquid's face with his bare hands.

Specs of red began to bleed into the blue of Naruto's eyes, but when he began to actually feel it he forced it back, 'I don't need you! This is for me! You didn't know or care about Master Miller so don't step in!' Naruto basically ordered the Kyuubi who was trying to leak its power into him by way of his anger.

Naruto landed several hard blows to Liquid's face with his fists before the stunned FOXHOUND commander was able to register what was happening and put up a defense against it. He grabbed Naruto by the front of his vest and yanked him in forward to jar him with a series of headbutts to the face that stopped the offense, "I will _not_ lose a fight to a babyfaced runt!" He shouted as he grabbed Naruto by the hair and threw him harshly into the railing on the side of the catwalk.

A bloody-nosed Naruto's body smashed the metal, however he lashed back out with a stiff front kick to Liquid's face, using the railing to steady himself. The satisfying clicking sound of Liquid's jaw suddenly snapping shut from the kick got Naruto back into the reason for the season so to speak, which was to make the man suffer for what he had done, "This 'babyfaced runt' is going to kill you Liquid!" Naruto shouted at his fellow blonde as he cast off his vest that Liquid had just used for leverage. If that was how the fight was going to go then he didn't need the extra grip for an opponent.

Liquid's back hit the wall and he growled at possibly getting a chipped tooth from some punk kid, 'He can't possibly be that good at hand-to-hand combat. He doesn't even know CQC or any kind of actual style.' Liquid thought as he came back in to fight Naruto on the narrow catwalk. His first jab was blocked but Liquid then followed up with a powerful straight right hand that broke Naruto's guard with brute force.

'Man he's got scary strength!' Naruto thought as he stumbled back, forearms stinging harshly from the blocked punch, still he wasn't even close to backing down. Liquid would have to kill him, which was the general idea of the fight in the first place. Naruto came back in at Liquid who seemed to be timing him for another powerful punch, however he telegraphed himself thinking that Naruto would just come forward and attack head-on. Liquid had taken that to be his nature in personality and in combat.

With Naruto seeing the punch coming right for him all the way, he used his superior speed to hop up onto the railing of the catwalk and deliver a hard kick to the side of Liquid's head that sent him stumbling to the side against the wall. Naruto jumped off of the railing to plant his boot right on Liquid's head as it sat near the wall to squash it but he missed. Naruto saved face by using his chakra to stick to the wall, preparing to launch another aerial attack until Liquid grabbed him by his back leg and pulled him off, slamming him against the metal railing again.

There was a reason why Liquid was the man in control. While he specialized in utilizing vehicles he was no slouch in any other combat aspects. Ocelot and Liquid were the only members of FOXHOUND that Naruto actually thought were dangerous just off of hand-to-hand skills alone. Raven had the size to be a threat but no real skill behind it other than rudimentary training to defend himself and while that would be enough against anyone normal, Naruto, Ocelot and Liquid had the pure skill to take him down on their own if it came down to fists.

With Naruto pinned against the rail, Liquid slammed a knee into Naruto's stomach and pounded away on his head with punches until Naruto dropped to his knees. He grabbed Naruto by his hair and jerked his head back, pulling him to his feet so that he was looking at him directly in the eyes, "Killing Miller and taking his place was the best way to get in with Snake… but if it really bothers you that much I'll make sure you and Snake meet him again soon!" He laughed, pointing at Snake still trying to survive in the heavily gassed room.

Taking his eyes off of an even mostly immobilized Naruto was a mistake that he would soon pay for. Even without his hands, Naruto still had something up his sleeve as a quick movement of his tongue produced a razor blade from his mouth that he used to quickly cut Liquid across the side of his face, forcing him to let go, 'I was aiming for his throat…' Naruto thought to himself as he got his legs back under him and shot out a side kick to the face, 'Why can this guy take a hit so well?' Naruto asked himself as the fight moved down the catwalk in front of the control room that Snake was stuck in, windows providing him a clear view as the fight moved directly into his line of sight as he struggled to keep from inhaling the gas.

Naruto wished he could help, but he had his own problems at the moment.

An angry Liquid with a rather deep wound on his cheek that might have taken an eye if it had been a few inches higher caught a spin kick from Naruto and threw him against the unbreakable glass of the control room, following up with a hard right hand to the body. He heard Naruto sharply exhale from the force of the punch before the youngster responded to Liquid's attack with knee to the inside leg that threw off his balance and an elbow to the face that sent him backwards and set them at a stalemate again.

"Why did you have to kill Master?" Naruto angrily demanded an answer from his former commander, "He didn't have anything to do with this! He was innocent!"

Liquid merely wiped away the blood running down his face from the cuts and contusions that had formed from his fight with Naruto, "There's no honor in dealings like this you idiot! Just because someone is 'innocent' doesn't mean anything! Wars are fought all over the world and innocents are caught in the crossfire everyday! You haven't seen true innocents! He was a means to an end, a way to manipulate Snake, to get intelligence on my enemy… just like the rest of FOXHOUND were merely fools if they could all fall to you and Snake so easily."

"And that's why your stupid plan to make a haven for soldiers doesn't have any legs to stand on…" Naruto growled out, "Why would anyone follow you if they couldn't trust you? You'd feed me to the jackals the second anything got a little tough, and you're offering me a chance to join you? No thanks. So good luck getting anyone worth working with to help you without Mantis brainwashing them!"

"In addition to the nearly 1000 men I have stationed here I have at least 1000 of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries with Sergei himself just waiting for the demands to be met!" Liquid snapped back at Naruto heatedly, "They will help form the core of the new Outer Haven! The world won't dare touch us as long as we have Metal Gear REX, and our forces will only grow while the larger nations bicker over what we accomplish here!" His faith in his plan, even after all of the potholes that had sprung up thus far was impressive, "One washed up old soldier for all of the things that I've done and will continue to do… I'd say that the kill is worth the benefit from it." He said lowly in a derisive manner before a row of shuriken buried themselves in his chest. He never even saw Naruto draw them he moved so fast.

And then he didn't even have time to react as Naruto angrily charged him and tackled him to the ground. Liquid used his legs and kicked Naruto back to get him off. As he tried to get up, he took a series of kicks to side of the body and the head from a Naruto that wasn't going to give him any reprieve even as he tried to stand back up.

Throwing stars? Honestly? If the kid could fight dirty then so could Liquid if that was how he wanted to play, he was sick of losing anyway. He was not about to let some 18 year old punk with a grievance keep beating him up at the time of his greatest triumph, this was his moment.

He got his opportunity quickly when Naruto went high with a kick at Liquid's head and missed due to Liquid ducking low. The crouching Liquid unleashed an uppercut to Naruto's most vulnerable area and basically lifted him off of the ground with the ferocity of the hit. No need for the fancy little assassin tricks that Naruto employed from time to time; cheating was cheating either way.

Naruto fell to the ground, wide-eyed and coughing horribly, feeling completely drained from the punch to his testicles. Liquid then proceeded to put the boots to the downed blonde's body and head until he pushed him towards the end of the catwalk and with one final kick pushed him over the edge to the ground below.

Liquid listened to the dull metallic thud of Naruto's body hitting the ground below and let out a loud laugh at the rudimentary way he disposed of him, "So much for that…"

Snake watched the entire sequence of events from his place trapped in the control room, "Kid!" He exclaimed before coughing. The gas had almost taken him down at this point, but he was aware enough to watch Naruto take the fall, "Otacon get me out of here!" He roared into his Codec.

Otacon had been hacking into the systems from wherever he had been to free Snake from the trap in the control room, _"Snake I've got the door open! You're free!"_

That was all he needed to hear as he raced through the room and sprinted outside, getting his full wits about him back now that he had fresh air to breathe. He rushed over towards where he had witnessed Naruto fight Liquid and quickly pointed his pistol at the man, "Liquid…"

"You'd point a weapon at your own brother?" Liquid asked mockingly, "I must say that you performed quite well even with all of the manipulation… I'm sure the boys in the Pentagon are saying the exact same thing."

"What are you talking about?" Snake asked, glaring Liquid down more or less at gunpoint.

"Following orders blindly with no questions asked…" Liquid ran a hand through his hair as his smirk returned now that his fight with Naruto was through, "You've lost your warrior's pride and become nothing more than a pawn Snake." He pointed down, alluding to where Naruto's body had dropped to, "At least he understood the concept of not letting himself be used… even if he sort of was in the end." He returned his full attention to Snake, "Stopping the nuclear launch, rescuing the hostages… all of this was just a diversion!"

Having had enough of all of the mind games after having just watched Naruto drop forty or fifty feet to the ground to go along with everything else he had been dealing with tonight, Snake snapped at his 'brother', "Tell me what you mean!"

"The Pentagon only needed you to come into contact with us! That's what killed the ArmsTech President and Decoy Octopus!" Liquid laughed at the realization on Snake's face, "That's right, you were sent in here to kill us so they could retrieve Metal Gear undamaged along with the bodies of as many Genome Soldiers as they could recover. From the beginning the Pentagon was just using you as a vector to spread FOXDIE."

"Are you telling me Naomi was working with the Pentagon?" The thought only made Snake grit his teeth angrily.

Liquid shrugged, "They thought she was. But the dear doctor couldn't be controlled so easily… my spy told me as much." He informed him, "My spy reported that she altered FOXDIE's program right before the operation… but no one knows how or why."

"I wonder…" Snake stated with a shadowed look in his eyes, "Maybe they arrested her so they could find out the answer to that."

"No doubt brother." Liquid said in a patronizing way as if he were talking to a child, "But I had no idea she was motivated by such petty revenge. We still don't know what changes she made to FOXDIE's program but I've already added the FOXDIE vaccine to the list of White House demands."

"There's a vaccine?" Snake didn't sound too sure about that. That would be a little too convenient wouldn't it? Why would a specifically altered disease meant for only a handful of people have a vaccine?

"There must be." On the other hand Liquid seemed positive that a vaccine existed, "But the only one who knows for sure is that woman… but it might prove to be unnecessary… because you contacted all of us so we must have all been exposed to the virus. Yes, Baker and Octopus were killed by it, but Ocelot, myself, and Naruto whom they didn't know wasn't on our side until you got here, along with you the carrier were apparently unaffected."

"You must be lucky like that." Snake quipped, "Maybe there's a bug in the programming."

Still, Liquid seemed to be unconcerned with anything going on at the moment, "In any case if it doesn't kill you then I'm not worried either. After all, our genetic code is identical."

"So we're-."

"Yes. We're twins." Liquid stated firmly, "But we're not ordinary twins. We're twins linked by cursed genes." He let out a bitter laugh, "Les Enfants Terribles." Anger then crossed his face, "You're fine. You got all of the old man's dominant genes. I got all of the flawed, recessive genes. Everything was done so that you would be the greatest of his children. The only reason I exist is so they could create you."

Snake let another joke fly, "I was the favorite huh?"

"That's right." Liquid spewed hatefully, "I'm just the leftovers of what they used to make you. Can you understand what it's like to know that you're garbage since the day you were born?" He then smirked again, "But… I'm the one father chose."

"So that's why you're so obsessed with Big Boss…" Snake surmised, "Some warped kind of love." He himself wouldn't have understood it. If anything Snake hated Big Boss for what he had done; betraying him, using him… love was the last thing he felt when he thought of his 'father'.

"Love?" Liquid sounded offended by the mere thought of it, "It's hate! He always told me I was inferior, and now I'll have my revenge! You should understand me brother. You were the one that killed our father with your own hands! You stole my chance for revenge! And now I'll finish the work father began. I will surpass him… I'll destroy every aspect of him…"

"You're just like Naomi." Snake remarked, sick of hearing Liquid's sob story. It didn't mean anything to him, just another psychopath that figured he was in the right somehow. Just someone else that couldn't move along to find something new for themselves.

"Well I'm damn sure not like you!" Liquid retorted, "Unlike you I'm actually proud of the destiny that is encoded into my very genes!" With that, Liquid jumped over the side of the railing and landed in REX's open cockpit.

Snake holstered his pistol and took off in a retreat away from the active machine, "Damn…" A gun sure wouldn't do any good against that metal behemoth for sure.

"Snake!" Liquid's voice came over the intercom that was being projected from REX, "Your blood will be the first to be spilt by this glorious new weapon!" The maintenance balconies around REX fell as it began to move, "Now you get to see the power of the weapon that will lead us in the 21st century!" The massive platform that REX had been on began to move up towards the upper level of the hangar, the place where it would be deployed outside.

As the platform moved up, the balconies and catwalks collapsed and were destroyed, prompting Snake to jump onto the platform to avoid being crushed, "How am I supposed to stop this thing?" Snake said to himself

"… I don't know…"

Snake turned to the side and saw Naruto sitting on the ground, multiple wounds on his person, but still alive and well off more or less, "Kid! Are you alright?" He had just fallen at least forty feet. He had to have some kind of lasting damage.

"I'll live." Naruto said in a weak voice, holding onto his groin area, "I've taken worse falls than that before... and there's nothing like the threat of death to make you forget that you might not be having kids later…" He remarked dryly as he slowly stood up as fast as his damaged goods would allow him to.

The platform finished rising to let them set in the large main hangar where the two immediately got their distance from REX. The sounds of gunfire alerted Snake to Naruto who was simply firing his SOCOM at REX without stopping. He even reloaded and kept firing until Snake spoke to him, "Kid what are you doing?"

Naruto turned to him and holstered his pistol as he answered, "Wasting bullets on this bastard… as if I'm really going to get lucky and do any damage like that." He then saw Snake pull out a Stinger missile launcher and gave him a deadpan look, "Right… _you_ find a way to hurt it. I'm going to go play defense with my body… again." He finished while clutching his balls, "I've got something special for situations like this… not that I ever thought I'd have to use it."

"Maybe we'll get lucky." Snake suggested.

"Yeah that's possible." Naruto replied sarcastically, "And just how's your day been going so far? I know mine sure has been _lucky_." He finished, getting a growl out of Snake.

His entire day had, and seemed to be continuing to go quite terribly if Snake had to say it out loud, "Point taken." However that was still a low blow that didn't need to be brought up. Before they could even continue to banter back and forth, REX then let out a guttural roar that let them know the fight was on, "Go Team Hopeless…" Snake said dryly.

Naruto was just stuck glaring at REX's cockpit where he knew Liquid wasn't even looking at him, just at Snake, "No matter what we have to do here to break that stupid robot I'm killing him before sunrise. That's a promise."

* * *

><p><strong>And that's chapter folks. The thing about Metal Gear REX is that it is hard to describe in words what it looks like. You've got to go somewhere and actually see a picture of it if you really care what it looks like. <strong>

**I've not got much to say here so I'll just leave you with a fond farewell, and then I'm going to work because someone's got to do it, right? **

**Questions of a non-spoiler related nature? As usual I'll see what I can do while I'm at work. Maybe answering some will kill some time.**

**Regardless of that, I hope you enjoyed. Kenchi out.**


	12. For the Record

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Although would it really be so farfetched if one of the owners of either got online and wrote this crap out just to mess with their own fans? I think I'd be vindictive enough to write fanfiction on my own franchise if I ever had one just to be an ass about it.

**Chapter 12: For the Record**

* * *

><p>"Any ideas?" Snake asked Naruto as they both faced Metal Gear REX down, Snake with a Stinger missile launcher, Naruto with his own hands, "Because I'm open for suggestions in this case."<p>

The sounds of REX's body parts warming up and beginning to move alerted them both, "Yeah, I've got a suggestion." Naruto stated as he heard the sound of a turret beginning to rotate, "Fucking run! That's my suggestion!" With that, Naruto and Snake both split off before REX's guns could cut them both down before the battle even truly began.

Naruto was faster than Snake and it was clear by the fact that he was able to keep pace with keeping out of Liquid's crosshairs as he ran in a straight pattern to avoid being shot up. As he proceeded to run circles around the titanic machine, he learned that getting close to REX anywhere around its front side was a terrible idea as it attempted to nail Naruto with a focused laser beam from its belly directed at the ground. Naruto stopped running to spring directly back and handspring his way out of getting cut in half with it, 'That's really strong!' Naruto thought as he saw the burn mark where the laser had cut into the metal on the ground, 'If that touches me then I'm going to be missing a limb or two!'

With Naruto being sent back far enough to not be a threat, REX took a missile shot from Snake on its other side. As REX turned to face Snake completely, it launched a trio of missiles of its own supply at him, forcing him to dodge with his heavy missile launcher, the only thing he figured had a chance of doing damage to REX.

Despite avoiding the overall explosions, Snake found himself shoved to the ground by the shockwave of the missiles blowing up. There had to be some kind of weakness on REX somewhere. The other two Metal Gears he had come into conflict against before had a weakness; their basically unarmored legs. REX clearly did not share that vulnerability. The cockpit, per the normal as far as Metal Gear designs went, happened to be well protected, and hitting it with a missile would do no damage to Liquid himself inside. It wouldn't even keep him from seeing them as there was no way to look out through the shut cockpit anyway.

Wait, if Liquid couldn't see them through the cockpit then how was he aiming and taking shots at them? The machine gun turrets he liberally took aim at Naruto and himself with were manually operated. They fired as if they were being operated by someone actually taking visual aim.

"I'll send you to hell you wretched brat!" Liquid shouted from REX's intercom system at Naruto as he had the massive construct stomp forward towards him. How did something so big walk so fast? Naruto would up dodging a stomp per leg from REX and outran the laser beam that tried to annihilate him once he started running between REX's legs.

'Yeah whatever… I guess I'll see you there, jerk.' Naruto ducked behind one of REX's legs to get Liquid to turn off the laser lest he begin to cut through his own hull. When REX lifted the leg to stomp down on Naruto with its metal stake-like protrusions, Naruto jumped onto the leg and stayed attached with chakra, "Hit me now you fucking bastard! How do you like dealing with somebody that fights back?" He snapped.

"What in the hell is he doing?" Snake wondered aloud as he watched scale REX with the assistance of his clones to keep him from getting shaken off along with his use of chakra to stick, "What is jumping on REX possibly going to do?"

"Get off!" Liquid shouted as he launched his missiles again with no regard for any damage done to himself, aiming at the Narutos attached to REX's legs.

Naruto dismissed his clones and jumped right off of REX before the missiles exploded on its hull instead of just him. Naruto backtracked all the way to Snake's side and grinned ferally at getting Liquid to attack himself, "Let's see how much of that he can get hit with. Those missiles could take down a tank."

"REX is way tougher than any tank kid." Snake said, not convinced that any real damage had been done in the slightest, "That was a good idea to go for the legs, and you probably would have gotten one of the older models like that. But look at how thick that armor is. We aren't getting through that." The dust from the missiles cleared to show barely even a mark on REX, "We've got to get to Liquid himself."

Naruto gave him a bewildered look, "And just how are we supposed to do that? Ask him nicely to open up so I can stab him?" REX let out a roar, Liquid's way of showing that he was coming at them, "And why can a robot roar?"

Snake didn't verbally respond, he just shot off another missile at REX, hoping to land some damage somewhere. The projectile exploded off of REX's head and in response Liquid made the huge Metal Gear fire its gun at his twin brother. Snake almost dropped his Stinger missile trying to avoid the bullets but luckily he was saved.

When Snake fired his missile, Naruto had already gotten moving around again and had filled a nearby metal crate of ammunition meant for REX with his last three live grenades before picking it up and chucking it at REX's head/cockpit. The resulting explosion allowed Snake enough time to get away from REX's gunfire to reload his Stinger, 'I owe that kid one… again. What is that, two or three times tonight? I've lost count.'

Even with the violent explosion made from Naruto's archaic attempt to blow REX to hell, there was barely a mark on it. And from the smoke of the explosion came three more missiles; one for him two for Snake, who was still reloading his cumbersome weapon, "Snake!" Naruto shouted before going into his nearly depleted supply pouch. He had no more smoke bombs to use, not that they would be useful at all, and semtex wouldn't be worth a damn in this instance. All he had left was a set of chaff grenades that he hadn't even touched thus far.

Duh, why didn't they think of that from the start?

Without even saying anything, Naruto rushed towards Snake and dropped one of his chaff grenades, having it explode and send the missile targeting system completely out of whack with the small particles of aluminum filling the air. This made avoiding the missiles child's play… if children played by dodging high explosives.

"Chaff?" Snake said as he saw the particles flittering through the air. As he and Naruto looked up at REX and saw it stumbling around he noticed the massive radome on its left shoulder rotating wildly, "That makes it four for you today kid…" Snake mumbled.

"Four what?" Naruto said, not getting what he was talking about, "Alright let's scrap this thing!" Naruto ran directly forward, 'Come shoot me now you dick!' He thought angrily about Liquid inside, hoping that the man was pissing his pants at not being able to see. Naruto formed a Rasengan in his right hand and was prepared to try and grind right into the cockpit somehow, and maybe through Liquid as well. One could only hope to be so lucky.

"Kid, go for the radome!"

Naruto heard Snake shout and almost stopped, however he never broke his stride, trying to take his chance to take REX down, "I thought you said Liquid was in the cockpit!"

"That thing is thicker than any damn tank! You won't get through that hull before the chaff settles if you even can at all!" Snake yelled at the top of his lungs, "If we bust the radome then REX can't see us and he can't attack if he can't see!" He picked his Stinger missile launcher back up but waited to fire in case he caught Naruto in the explosion.

"Fine! Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Naruto ran up the side of Metal Gear REX and slammed his Rasengan into the radome on REX's shoulder, but before he could start tearing it apart, it came back online and attempted to slam its body and Naruto into the side of the hangar, forcing him to jump off prematurely lest he get crushed.

The opening provided by Naruto allowed Snake to launch a missile now that the sunny blonde was free and clear, a missile that was right on track for the targeted radome and scored a direct hit. Their little offense against REX that they managed to string together seemed to have pissed Liquid off due to the double duty he attempted to pull after the radome came back on line from the chaff. He attempted to slice through Naruto with a laser and shoot at Snake with his machine gun, but trying to take on both with attacks at the same time desperately lessened the effectiveness of them, as Naruto quickly avoided the laser and sprang back onto REX while it was also shooting at Snake.

"Kid…" Snake said with trepidation as even if the shooter was sort of preoccupied, it was still a machine gun firing at him.

"I'm on it, hold your horses!" Naruto yelled back to him as he made his way up to REX's nose, climbing right up REX's back to the top of its head to drop some semtex into the gun pits on the side of its head that were targeting Snake, "How do you like that 'commander'?" Naruto shouted at Liquid mockingly before jumping back into the air as REX tried to shake him off again just as the semtex activated and exploded.

Naruto watched his handiwork from a wall nearby that he had stuck himself to and flipped Liquid off from his position until the missile pods on REX's legs opened up to fire again, "Crap."

"I've got missiles of my own Liquid." Snake quipped as he fired another shot from his Stinger missile that hit the radome on REX's shoulder again. As the missiles went at Naruto who jumped off of the wall to dodge, Snake had to comment, "Come on… I've shot it so many times already, how tough is the attachment alone?"

"Die Naruto!" Liquid shouted at Naruto as the missiles flew through the air at his former underling, "You were always more trouble than you were worth!" He finished as he turned to deal with Snake since he had cornered and in his mind dealt with the troublesome blonde gnat that had been buzzing around him.

'This is going to be ten different kinds of suck!' Naruto thought as he pulled one of his throwing knives and bit down on it between his teeth before forming his cross hand-seal, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Three clones of Naruto formed and jumped directly in the path of the missiles, taking the hits for Naruto as he held tight to the wall he was on, biting down hard on his knife to keep from yelling too loudly.

This was the third time today that he had been technically caught in an explosion. If he never saw another detonation for as long as he lived he would probably a-ok with that.

But now it was time to make REX go boom somehow.

Under the cover of the smoke obscuring him, Naruto formed another Kage Bunshin and held his right arm out, having his clone hold out its left as the two formed a Rasengan at least double the size of the original between them. Liquid was busy firing at Snake, keeping him from firing his Stinger missiles again, thus his back was turned and Naruto was out of REX's field of vision.

Naruto's eyes turned red as he and his clone launched from the side of the wall as hard as they could at the back of Metal Gear REX, "Eyes on the prize Liquid! Odama Rasengan (Great Ball Rasengan)!"

Liquid never saw it coming. The massive Rasengan slammed off of the back of REX's head and exploded on contact. Snake had to turn away from the sudden flash of light and power from whatever Naruto had just done. He had even dropped his Stinger from the shockwave that had emitted, 'And I thought that the kid was dangerous enough already… where the hell did he get that from?' Whatever had just happened, the sounds coming off of REX were doing their best impression of a crinkling aluminum can.

The explosions coming off of REX cleared to reveal that there was no radome left whatsoever. It had been roughly ripped off and the shoulder of REX had a deep spiral dent in it that reached over much of the left side of the machine with black smoke billowing freely.

"One attack of… whatever that was did all of that?" Snake said aloud, looking around for Naruto. He hadn't seen him after that huge ball of energy or whatever it was exploded all over the back of REX, "Kid! Where are you?"

"I'm here." Naruto said as he stood up from underneath REX breathing heavily. Sweat poured down his face that he wiped away with his right forearm, "I love that move so much." He said with a weak grin. Between the damage he had been taking on and off for hours, the amount of clones he had been making, and the cost of the Odama Rasengan he was really feeling it. But he still had something that needed to be done, "Now Liquid needs to open up before I cut that cockpit open like a tin can." He said with an edge in his voice.

REX, which had been motionless for quite some time, shifted the laser under its belly slightly and fired at Naruto, forcing him to dodge with a dive to the side that sent him to the ground. REX lifted one leg from the ground with its stakes extended, directly over Naruto's body, prepared to crush him like an insect. Before it could smash him, a figure positioned himself under Naruto and more or less kicked him out of the way before catching REX's foot, holding it up.

Naruto's body slid over to Snake who kneeled down and helped him back to his feet as he looked out at the Cyborg Ninja that had caught REX's foot, "Gray Fox! So it really is you?"

"A name from long ago. It sounds better than 'Deepthroat' though." Gray Fox said as his real face was visible through the open visor in his helmet, "You two don't seem to be looking so well." He commented calmly in his raspy voice.

Naruto merely stood up on his own two feet and flipped Gray Fox off glibly. Liquid however, even though he couldn't see, he could hear just fine and knew who had REX's foot caught as he drew it back up to stomp again, "I'll send you back to hell!"

As REX stomped again, Gray Fox leaped out of the way as the foot came down and landed right by Naruto and Snake. As the blind REX stomped about in their direction, the three of them scattered, with Gray Fox and Snake going off in their own direction for cover while Naruto kept trying to goad Liquid to open the cockpit as best he could, "Fox why? What do you want from me?" Snake asked him rather heatedly.

"I'm a prisoner of death." Gray Fox replied, "Only you can free me."

"Stay out of this Fox." Snake said in an tense voice, "What about Naomi? She's hell bent on taking revenge for you." He could see the emotion in the man's eyes as he said his sister's name, "You're the only one that can stop her."

"I can't!" Gray Fox said as the sounds of gunfire rang out, signs of Naruto's ongoing battle with the blind but still dangerous Metal Gear REX. It wasn't able to see, but that made it wildly dangerous to get close to, with the machine gun firing wildly and the laser running rampant all over any close range he could get to he was stuck holding his distance.

"Why not?" Snake wasn't going to take some bullshit answer for an excuse. He'd been getting more than enough of that for the last few hours to have to take it from someone he was actually face-to-face with.

"Because I'm the one who killed her parents!" Gray Fox finally blurted out, bringing Snake to silence, "I was young then and couldn't bring myself to kill her too. I felt so horrible I decided to take her with me. I raised her like she was my own blood to soothe my own guilty conscience. Even now she thinks of me as her brother… even when I'm like _this_." He said, referencing his cybernetic body, "From the outside we might have seemed like a happy brother and sister, but every time I looked at her I saw her parents' eyes staring back at me. So tell her for me, tell her I'm the one who did it." He begged.

Meanwhile Liquid was still going berserk in REX, "I know you're still here! Just die already!" He shouted, turning his guns away from Naruto as he couldn't see where he was. He wound up firing at the crates of ammunition and fuel drums all over the hangar.

One of the drums exploded near Naruto and blew him away, bouncing him off of the wall, "Liquid's got a horseshoe up his ass…" Naruto muttered to himself as he saw him still shooting around the area. He stood up and wiped the grime from his face as he glared at the wounded Metal Gear, 'Open the cockpit so I can slit your goddamn throat Liquid!'

Gray Fox and Snake had to duck down as bullets ricocheted off of the metal walls of the hangar, "We're just about out of time." Gray Fox said to Snake, "Here's a final present from Deepthroat." He looked out at REX and rushed from behind their cover, "I'll stop it from moving!"

"Fox!" Snake shouted in vain as his friend and former comrade ran out and dodged the sporadic fire from REX.

Dodging the errant bullets and missiles, Gray Fox got close enough that REX's laser activated and severed his left arm from his body effortlessly. Still, he didn't slow down and in an effort to keep a second laser blast from prematurely finishing him, he jumped and stuck to the wall prepared to fire his arm cannon, similar to Naruto earlier, only unlike Naruto he wasn't far enough away from REX that this was a viable strategy to try and use to avoid it, nor did he get himself high enough off of the ground, as REX's head slammed itself against his body and the wall.

Gray Fox got his arms around the cockpit/beak of REX that was crushing him and tried to hold it off from fully killing him as the blood splatter from being smashed was clearly visible against the wall. Liquid's voice mockingly came over REX's P.A. system, "In the Middle East we don't hunt foxes, we hunt jackals. Instead of foxhounds we use royal harriers. So let's see just how strong that exoskeleton of yours is." He remarked as he pushed against the struggling cyborg, "Snake! Are you going to just sit by and watch him die?"

Naruto growled and sprinted over to Gray Fox's severed arm, freeing the sword he saw in its grasp and taking it for himself as he kept rushing towards Gray Fox. He may not have known the man… cyborg… whatever. He may not have known him very well and he may have fought against him once, but he saved his ass two years ago, and he was helping to fight Liquid in REX, and that was more than enough of a reason to consider him a comrade.

As he got closer, Liquid pulled away to let Gray Fox fall to the ground on an elevated ledge. His body was bleeding heavily and electricity rippled through it as well, "Gray Fox!" Both Naruto and Snake shouted simultaneously as the cockpit opened up. Liquid saw Naruto rushing towards him and fired the machine gun turret at him to stop him in place.

"You won't get close boy!" Gray Fox shouted at Naruto before addressing Snake who had the ranged weapon, "…Do it now Snake! Fire the Stinger!" Fox's place on the ledge was right by Liquid's open cockpit.

"Can you really shoot?" Liquid taunted freely, "You'll kill him too!"

Snake lifted the Stinger as if by reflex and let it lock on to his side view of Liquid's open cockpit, but he just couldn't finish the job. Not with a still living Gray Fox right there as well, 'I can't do it!' He thought to himself frantically.

"Now…" Gray Fox said weakly, trying to convince Snake to shoot, "In front of you I can finally die..." He said sounding rather relieved of that fact, "After Zanzibar I was taken from the battle… neither truly alive nor truly dead. An undying shadow in the world of lights… but soon… soon… it will finally end." With that, Liquid used the top of his open cockpit to scrape Gray Fox off of the ledge to the ground below.

"Die!" Liquid roared with hatred as he lifted REX's foot and stomped it down on top of Gray Fox, crushing his lower body under the Metal Gear's full weight just for the sake of cruelty.

Cruel because Gray Fox still didn't die. His cybernetic body was strong. Strong enough to give some parting words, "Snake… we're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting was the only thing I was ever good at… but at least I always fought for what I believed in. Goodbye." He then weakly turned his head towards Naruto, who had the sword that he had been holding fall from his hand once he saw him get stomped, "And I do hope that you find your own reason for fighting… I could always see it in your eyes that you still have not."

He opened his mouth to say something else to the youngest soldier in the room out of all of them, but Liquid lifted REX's leg and gave one final stomp that engulfed Gray Fox's entire body. Snake and Naruto could only stare at the blood pooling from beneath REX's foot as it let out a roar at having taken its first life as an active weapon. The roar seemed to wake Snake up and bring him back to reality, "FOX!"

"Fool…" Liquid muttered as he stepped back from the bloody smear that used to be Gray Fox, "He prayed for death and it found him. You see? You can't protect anyone! You can't even protect yours-!" Liquid's words died in his throat as one of Naruto's throwing knives buried itself in the side of his neck. Liquid let out a slight noise from literally choking on his words and pulled the knife out, bleeding profusely from the wound as he glared down at Naruto. As he opened his mouth to berate him he stopped upon seeing a red aura surrounding him in the appearance of a fox complete with a tail of energy.

'First it was Master Miller… now it was Gray Fox…' Naruto thought to himself as he couldn't help but try to block his own tears. He hadn't cried in years and he sure as hell wasn't going to give Liquid the satisfaction of seeing him do it there. Just seeing Gray Fox die made him feel it, as he at that moment could almost see Miller's own dead body in front of his eyes, "You're going to die Liquid…" Naruto said lowly as the Kyuubi's chakra bubbled around him. He couldn't keep his anger out of the equation any longer. His voice was noticeably rougher than it normally was, "I'm going to cut your bleeding heart out!" He screamed as he picked Gray Fox's sword up off of the ground and ran directly towards Liquid at least twice as fast as he had been moving before.

Liquid didn't want to risk messing with any more of Naruto's weird powers as they seemed to be getting scarier, 'After that last little surprise he gave me, I don't need to see anymore.' In this case it was better to go around blind than be dead. As he began to shut his cockpit in preparation for defense against whatever Naruto intended to do, metal ringing and then broken whirring filled his ears. He looked up at his cockpit opening to find that it was being kept from closing by Gray Fox's sword that Naruto had thrown javelin-style, 'What?'

Snake didn't have any qualms about holding off on firing his Stinger missile now, as it impacted off of Liquid's cockpit, nailing him with the brunt of the explosion, marking him up with burns and other damage. It was the cleanest shot he had gotten at his twin brother since he had gotten into REX.

Liquid just didn't know what to do at this point. His attention was split between his brother toting missiles while he was wide open and vulnerable and between Naruto who had long since proven he could climb up around his now open cockpit to get to him directly, and he didn't want to find out just what him being surrounded by that red aura really meant, "It's not over yet!" Liquid shouted in defiance, "I won't die here like this! Not when I'm so close!" The controls on REX were more or less useless due to the explosion, but he simply wouldn't give up the ghost in this instance.

REX staggered along until it simply collapsed in an upright position and remained motionless. And Liquid saw his life flash before his eyes as the red streak that he knew to be Naruto rushed across the room at him with murder in his eyes as he tried to scramble out of his seat.

Whether luckily or unluckily at that moment the entire massive Metal Gear exploded harshly through the entire hangar with Liquid still basically behind the wheel, throwing Snake away from the sheer force of the massive machine wrecking and doing the same to Naruto, first engulfing his body in flames due to his proximity before throwing him away as well.

XxX

"**Do you see now how much you need me in this world?"** Naruto heard in his head before he even opened his eyes back up, **"The mere explosion of that death machine… do you think you would have managed to defeat it or even survive it were it not for me enhancing your powers? And that was just a taste of what I can provide you."** Trying to take credit… he didn't need any help. Teamwork beat REX as far as Naruto was concerned. If it hadn't been for the combined efforts of he and Snake then he would have just been pounding away at the hull again and again until he ran out of energy. If Liquid's attention hadn't been diverted to turn around then he never would have gotten close enough with Odama Rasengan to bust the radome that eventually led to the cockpit being exposed. All the Kyuubi did was try to influence him when Gray Fox was killed, playing on his ever growing anger. He was about to charge like a berserker, a stupid berserker.

He didn't want that bastard bleeding its chakra into his body. Powerup or not, he didn't want the Kyuubi to get any satisfaction or sense of victory out of his own desire to kill Liquid. It wasn't because of anything the demon did, it was simply because he wanted revenge. The Kyuubi was not to overstep its bounds damn it.

'Yeah… you're a great blast shield.' Naruto thought derisively as he felt warm and stick fluid covering his head, his own blood, 'So why don't you get this fucking hunk of metal off of me before that fuel leaks over here and we get set on fire if you're so great?' He quipped mentally. After REX exploded, part of a catwalk fell and pinned Naruto beneath it.

He was fine… as fine as he could be with hundreds of pounds of dead weight trapped on top of him, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that the entire hangar was on fire and the extra fuel was leaking all over the place. He couldn't even move his left arm due to it being pinned and pain shot through him every time he tried. He couldn't move his legs either, but at least he could still feel them. Things could have been worse, but he still needed to get out.

"SNAAAAAKE!"

Naruto heard Liquid shout Snake's name before a thud hitting the ground. Possibly Liquid's receipt for kicking him off the catwalk fifty feet to the ground earlier. And it was officially time to get himself out of trouble, "Rasengan don't fail me now…" Naruto muttered as he formed the jutsu in his good hand and used it to try and propel some of the wrecked catwalk off of him. Naruto forced enough of the debris off of him to slide himself free and clear of being crushed, "Ow…"

"Naruto!" Turning his head to see who called his name, he saw Meryl running towards him with Snake, "Naruto are you alright?"

Naruto shakily stood back up with his left arm now basically useless, "Pretty much…" He looked at Snake and saw multiple bruises and cuts on his face, "You look like you were on the ass end of an asskicking."

"Look who's talking." Snake replied to Naruto who was more or less stained with his own blood and had a broken arm, "It's time to go kid. There's a parking garage to the west of here. We need to get out of here before we get hit with a nuclear strike. Meryl and Otacon got us a ride out of here."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What?" Naruto said, holding his left arm with his right, "But we just won didn't we? Why the hell is a nuclear strike coming? Where's the fucking loyalty?" He asked heatedly.

"I couldn't tell you kid, but we need to get the hell out of here." Snake said as he and Meryl began moving towards the small door at the west end of the hangar. Once they noticed that Naruto didn't follow them, they turned around to see him running back towards the flaming wreck of REX, "What are you doing? Come on, let's go!"

Naruto just kept running towards REX, "I'll catch up, I promise! Just get going already!"

Snake growled and let Naruto make his own decision. If there was a reason for him to lag behind then it was his choice to do so. He was a grown man and had been nothing less than invaluable the entire way through.

"Naruto stop being stupid!" Meryl yelled at him. What on earth was he hanging back for? And he was telling them to leave without him? Just what did he think he was going to do to get himself out of there?

Naruto kept running without turning to face them, "Snake get her out of here now. I might have a broken arm, but I don't need both of them to knock her out and make you two leave!" He roared before vanishing into the fiery hangar as he headed towards REX.

"Naruto!" Meryl yelled, about to head in after Naruto before getting her arm grabbed by Snake, "What? Are you just going to let him go?"

"It's his decision." Snake said, not letting her go, "He's pretty much done this all on his own from the start, at least respect him enough to let him finish this on his own if that's what he wants." Meryl frowned but nodded as she began to lead Snake out of the small door towards the parking garage that stood in front of their escape route. Before leaving, Snake stopped at the door and yelled back in the hangar, "Kid if you're not out of here in ten minutes there isn't anything that'll save you from getting nuked!"

As they ran through the corridors that led them there they finally saw Otacon sitting behind the wheel of a jeep, "Come on!" He shouted, waving over at them, "Hurry up!"

Meryl jumped in the passenger's seat as Snake took up a spot in the back on a machine gun turret, just in time as well, because Genome Soldiers burst into the room from an adjacent door, lining themselves up nearly perfectly for Snake to gun them down before they could even attempt to stop them as Otacon then crashed the jeep through a garage door and flew through the tunnel that lay behind it leading to the surface.

As they flew through the tunnels, Snake prepared his machine gun for the blockades that he could see set up ahead that they would have to break through to get out.

XxX

(With Naruto)

Covered in more soot and burns than ever, Naruto ran through the hall he had seen Meryl and Snake go through to get out. On his back strapped between his Dragunov and his MP5K, there was Gray Fox's special sword. For someone that did that much to allow them victory today, Naruto wasn't going to just let him be forgotten, even if he and Snake were the only ones that knew what he had done.

As he made his way to the parking garage, he heard the roar of an engine turning on, allowing him to let out a sigh of relief. Apparently Snake, Meryl, and Otacon hadn't left yet so he could catch a ride.

When he arrived however, he saw the jeep peel out of the garage and the ruined door at its exit with a squeal of tires. He saw the blonde hair of the man behind the wheel however and grit his teeth, 'Liquid! Why won't he just die already! What is he, the douchebag Terminator?' He thought to himself as he looked around, 'And that bastard took the last jeep! Son of a bitch!' Naruto ran to the center of the room and rapidly looked for anything to help only for his eyes to land on something that made them widen, "Holy crap I thought he got rid of this thing!"

Naruto ran over to the corner of the garage and picked up a sleek looking board that looked to be made of light metal three inches thick and slightly less than his own height in length, "My platform board! I thought he shipped this thing back to R&D!"

Being FOXHOUND's probational member, for an entire year Naruto was more or less the guinea pig for anything that their development teams came up with as far as equipment and weapons went. If the others liked it they would test it themselves after seeing him use it, but most of the time everything he tried had bugs and would fail miserably. This was one of the experiments that had apparently failed… only Naruto didn't feel like giving up the prototype.

The board was based on old Soviet flying platforms, old designs of scouting vehicles meant to access places difficult to reach on foot, only instead of using one's hands to maneuver, this board allowed the user to use their feet and legs to move it, keeping their hands free to use their own weapons.

Naruto first tested this in early December and crashed horribly. As a Christmas gift to himself he kept it instead of letting Liquid or any of the others return it to research and development as per the original arrangement as he was determined to make it work, and he did. With the free time given to him to do absolutely nothing at Shadow Moses, all he really did to kill said time was to practice on the board and make it work for him, and work it did.

By January when he had been discovered to not have returned it, actually keeping it in his room, Liquid confiscated it as contraband and Naruto thought that was the last he had seen of it.

Apparently things were too far along in Liquid's plans for him to return it or get rid of it, because weeks later Naruto found his lost tool in the parking garage that he hadn't been able to get access to until now.

"Yes! It still runs!" And he wasted no time in firing the board up and hopping on it, set on getting himself out of the base and chasing Liquid down.

XxX

A FAMAS toting Liquid Snake had gotten his own ride out of the base and had mercilessly pursued Snake, Meryl, and Otacon, down the escape tunnel, taking shots at them and smashing his jeep into theirs, trying his best to exterminate his brother and his other targets.

As Snake fired his machine gun turret at Liquid he was begrudgingly impressed with Liquid's driving skill. The man dodged enough bullets to keep his jeep running and in good enough shape to stay in pursuit, and all with one hand on the wheel, because he was still holding that FAMAS and shooting right back, coming close to hitting all of them a few times prior.

Liquid got close enough to ram into the back of Snake's jeep, throwing off his machine gun aim before pulling off, keeping Snake from getting an easy shot at him. Meryl growled and tried taking aim with her Desert Eagle, but when Liquid fired at them again she dropped her gun as she ducked down in her seat.

Getting alongside the enemy jeep, Liquid ducked in and out of pillars in the tunnel, timing them just right so that he could slip through, ram into Snake's jeep, duck back out through another pillar, and avoid Snake's return fire.

As true, honest daylight could be seen at the end of the tunnel, an angry Liquid sped ahead of the loaded down enemy jeep and spun in front of them, cutting them off with his own and ducking his head just as they crashed and both flipped over just outside in the deep snow of the post-blizzard of the new morning.

Otacon was thrown a short distance from the jeep and was knocked unconscious as he lay in the snow, but Snake and Meryl were pinned beneath the jeep, unable to free themselves along with the disorientation of the crash itself, "Meryl… are you alright?" He asked her, holding his head.

"Yeah…" Meryl replied, "I'm just a little shook up." She tried to crawl out but found her legs stuck in the snow beneath the overturned, "Ugh, it's no good, I can't move." She looked over at the other wrecked jeep across the way, "What happened to Liquid?"

"Liquid's got to be dead…" Snake said somewhat hopefully. He hadn't seen any sign of him since the crash while everyone else could be accounted for. He then heard metallic thudding and shifting and bit his lip, "Uh oh."

Liquid limped from the backside of his worthless jeep, limping, but still holding his FAMAS in one hand, "Snake…" He seethed as he bled steadily from the wounds all over his face and bare torso. He stomped over to the trapped Snake and Meryl who couldn't free themselves and smirked at their helpless state. Before he could get any closer to prepare to execute them, he heard whirring coming the tunnel and turned to see a board fly out of the tunnel and miss him by a mile planting itself further awa, "Ha! What was that supposed to-?" He was about to say, but a sudden sharp pain kept him from finishing.

Standing behind Liquid, between himself and Snake and Meryl, Naruto held Gray Fox's sword in one hand in a downward grip, piercing Liquid through his collar area directly downward on his left side. He let out a gasp and dropped to his knees.

"Gray Fox and Master Miller say hi Liquid." Naruto said, breathing heavily as he kept his tight grip on the sword, seemingly twisting it deeper to make sure this time the man died for certain, "I'd say that you'd have found that out soon enough, but you're going to be too busy burning in hell to care."

"…You stupid brat…" Liquid struggled to utter as blood began to well up through his body and flow from his mouth, "You're still just a child."

"Whatever." Naruto muttered before pulling the sword out of Liquid amid a fountain-like spray of blood that rained down on him and the white snow on the ground, "And you're still just dead." He said as Liquid's body fell forward with a crunch of snow beneath him once and for all.

All Naruto could do was just stare down at Liquid's body, holding the sword that had done the deed in his hand loosely. He had killed the man that had done away with one of his only concrete links to anything in this world, and he didn't feel any better because of it. He couldn't even feel angry… because he knew that the way he had killed Liquid had been agonizing. Now what?

He looked at the sun and let out a long sigh as he went over to pull his board out of the snow that it had stuck itself in, 'What do I do now?' He thought to himself. Was he really just supposed to be reprocessed and placed somewhere else? Fuck that, they're going to nuke the base. He didn't care for this country anyway. If they were just going to get rid of him as if he were dirt then why would he fight for them? And then he could see Liquid's earlier point.

He could see and understand… that didn't mean he agreed with it or regretted stopping it. Liquid was still a son-of-a-bitch and the world was a better place without his scheming ass around treating him and his loved ones like pawns in a game.

As he thought about these things, a hand planted itself on his bad shoulder, forcing him to twist his face and hiss in pain, "Ah, sorry kid. I forgot." Snake said apologetically towards messing with Naruto's hurt arm, "Well, we're officially dead."

"What?" Naruto replied questioningly, "Damn… the nukes. I forgot."

Snake let out a chuckle, "No, not literally… I said _officially_. The Colonel faked my and Meryl's deaths so that no one would try to come after us in another cover up. There's no nuke coming. The man behind the cover-up was acting alone, the Secretary of Defense." He sounded as if he didn't believe that excuse, but since he was about to disappear again there was no tracing it down any further than what he had been told, "What about you?"

"Bring it." Naruto said with no amusement in his tone, "If anyone wants to cover this up they can feel free to try and find me… they'd better not count on going home though, dattebayo." He sat down on his recently freed board and looked up at Snake, "I still have questions Snake. There are still things I need to know. The only thing I _do_ know is that I'm not going to find my answers being a soldier for the U.S."

"So what are you going to do?" Snake asked as he watched Meryl bring Otacon back to the land of the conscious, "I really don't think there's going to be a problem with you getting discharged after this." He had been doing this for how many years before this anyway? Yeah, he could leave officially, even though he probably wouldn't take official channels regardless.

Naruto shook his head, "I really don't think you should know what I'm going to do." He said, "No one needs to know what I'm going to do next. It's better for everyone that way."

At this point, Meryl came over and caught the last things that Naruto said, "Wait, you're not coming with us?" She said in a confused voice. If he wasn't going with them then what was he going to do? Where was he going to go? "Are you going home?"

"I don't have a home to go back to honestly." Naruto replied with a shrug, something that made the others feel for him for different reasons, "But there still are things I have to do." He said, standing back up while wiping the bloody sword off in the snow.

Meryl frowned until she remembered what she had been told moments before. She more or less had a clean slate at this point, so with a grin on her face she walked up to Naruto as he placed the sword on his back and stood up on his board, "Do you think you'll need a 'ghost' following you around for whatever it is you're supposed to be doing?"

Snake just smirked as Naruto stared at her owlishly, "Are you serious? You've known me for like two days, you can do whatever you want in the world now, and you want to go with me to get into more trouble?" A confident nod was Meryl's answer. Naruto looked over at Snake who was backing away with his hands up defensively, smirk still in place, "Why?"

"What else am I going to go do?" She responded with a shrug. Apparently it was as simple as that.

Naruto let out a groan, but then again she was supposed to be 'dead'. Maybe she would fit in? Maybe not, but if that was what she wanted he couldn't just ditch her there. And Snake didn't seem to be offering up any alternative options for the girl, "You do know that this is a really stupid idea don't you?"

"Of course it's stupid." Meryl said cheekily, "It involves you after all." She let out a laugh at the glare he gave her following her crack, "Just take me with you. It's not like you won't need some help, right?"

"Fine!" Naruto exclaimed, "You can come with me, but you'd better not drag me down… I've already got enough issues to deal with." He jerked his head towards the board he was standing on, "Get on, and watch the arm."

Meryl quickly did as instructed and jumped on, grabbing a hold of him, "What are you going to do with that sword? Do you even know how to use that thing?"

Naruto scoffed, "It's a sword, not a jetpack. I'll figure it out." He looked down at Snake, "And what are you going to do?"

A rather serene smile came to Snake's face, "I think I'm just going to live my life…" He said as he continued on in his thoughts, 'However much time I have left… who cares about the FOXDIE?' A speech Naomi had given him earlier had inspired him to do such. He then extended his hand towards Naruto, "I have to say it was good to work with you kid. Having you shoot at me instead of with me would have really sucked. I'd say it was a pleasure, but we both know that it wasn't."

Naruto grinned and grabbed Snake's hand in a hearty shake, "Hey, you never know. We might run into each other some other time. It was good working with you too Solid Snake." He gave Snake a faux salute and fired up the board, suddenly having it hover off of the ground much to Meryl's shock and surprise, "Take care of yourself…" He finished before shooting off on the board, flying off over the landscape.

Otacon could only watch things as they went down, adjusting the glasses on his face, "Do you think they'll be alright?" He asked Snake. Even if he was still frightened by and somewhat upset with Naruto, he couldn't help but acknowledge that he had been a tremendous help.

Snake nodded confidently, "Yeah, those are some tough kids Otacon. I wouldn't worry about them at all. They'll land on their feet no matter what happens."

XxX

(A While Later – Alaska Mainland Coast)

Johnny drove the jeep across the frozen ocean surface that had become such due to the intense cold of the blizzard that had lasted well over 24 hours. He had been relieved to get the call from Naruto that he was on his way to meet them, not just because he didn't feel confident that he could hide out on his own, but also because the only thing that had kept him from being intimidated to death by Sniper Wolf's stare was his assurance that Naruto would be there by sunrise.

As he looked out on the horizon of the frozen waters he saw a single figure flying across the ice coming their way rapidly. He looked through the scope of Sniper Wolf's confiscated rifle, trying to ignore her annoyed growl as he did so before he let out a loud exclamation, "It's him! It's the Boss! He's here!" Sniper Wolf perked up and stopped glowering at Johnny once she heard him say that, "But I think he's got someone with him? Who is that?" He wondered aloud.

Not too long afterwards, Naruto's board came to a stop right by Johnny's jeep as he turned to the girl that had been holding onto him, "How was that? It was awesome right?" It was clear that he loved his little personal transport from the grin on his face, "This thing is great."

From behind Naruto, Meryl let go and shakily jumped off of the board before he even killed the power to it, just to get back on solid ground sooner. Her knees were shaking from riding on the dangerous flying board as fast as they had gone. That thing was more dangerous than any motorcycle in her mind, "Never again…" She said with a glare at Naruto, "…Never make me ride one of those things again."

Johnny's eyes widened behind his balaclava and even Wolf couldn't take her eyes off of Meryl, "Boss what is she doing here?" He asked, pointing at her accusingly, "What are you thinking?"

Meryl's eyes panned over Johnny and Wolf and her own eyes widened, "You two?" She looked at Naruto accusingly, "I thought you said you killed Sniper Wolf back when we ran into Otacon!"

Naruto shrugged, "I never said I killed her. I let you guys come to that conclusion on your own." He picked up his board and placed it in the back of the jeep, covering it with the tarp that had been over Wolf when she had been smuggled out, "I don't like killing my friends, and I protect them when I can. I saw a chance and I took it." It didn't take a genius to feel the tension between the three of them. Johnny had been Meryl's prison guard, Wolf had brutally wounded Meryl in a rather cruel manner to goad Snake into a fight earlier, "Hey! Chill out!" He snapped, getting all of their full attention.

Meryl pointed at the still tied up Wolf, "But she shot me three times in my arm and legs! She didn't even try to make it painless!"

Wolf could only let out a chuckle, "It could have been worse. And by the way, no matter where I shot you it was going to hurt honey. Bullets hurt when they go into you." She finished in an informative baby voice to the soldier several years her junior.

Meryl tried to lunge at the tied up Wolf, but Naruto caught her and threw her back with his good arm. She tried to get past him again, but he kicked her legs out from under her and knocked her to the ground, planting his foot on her chest staring down at her seriously, "I said chill out. Right now you guys are all officially dead… except for me and maybe Johnny, but that's different." He looked up to see the smug look on Sniper Wolf's face and pointed at her, "And stop antagonizing people. I'm the one that put this bullshit plan together so that means I'm more or less responsible for all of you… Kami help me…" He kept trying to push the thought out of his head to try and make them kiss and make up, right now was supposed to be a serious moment that marked his leadership status.

"Okay." Meryl said, trying to squirm out from under his boot on her chest, not knowing why it was so difficult to budge, "Just let me up. I promise I won't strangle Wolf."

Naruto rolled his eyes but took his foot off of her and walked over to Wolf to cut her loose with his sword on his back. Instead of wishing to ask him where he got that, she focused on the limp limb hanging at his right side, "Your arm…" She looked into his eyes and noticed that he was pretty much covered in blood, some his own, some not, "What in God's name did you do on that island?"

A frown marred his face as he could see her concern for him. Sitting in the front passenger's seat of the jeep, he turned around and gave her a reassuring smile, "Don't worry about me Wolf, I'll be fine if I can just make a sling or something." He wasn't about to head to a hospital for that crap. They had somewhere they needed to get to anyway and they were more or less on the clock. They needed to get as far away from Shadow Moses Island as they could, "Right now we need to get you guys to Russia. I know someone that would let you guys lay low especially since they know who Wolf is."

"Gurlukovich Mercenaries?" Wolf asked, getting a nod from Naruto, "Ah. I see." She already knew because Johnny had told her what Naruto's plan basically consisted of once she had reawakened from her KO. They still thought of Wolf as a FOXHOUND ally as the two groups had conspired for all sorts of things after the ransom had gone through. She and Johnny could most definitely get some sanctuary there, but there was still the problem of Naruto and Meryl, "But what about you two? They know that you were supposed to-."

"They don't even know who Meryl is." Naruto cut her off as he directed Meryl to get in the back with Wolf, a method of having them hash out their problems on the fly as they glared at each other once she sat down, "And I'm not going to Russia with you." Saying that got all of their attention, "At least not yet. I still need to go a few places." He finished somberly, looking away from everyone after slamming his head lightly off of the seat once.

Wolf ran a hand through his hair as Johnny climbed into the driver's side and started the jeep back up, ready to leave, "What's the matter little probie?" She asked him in a soothing voice, "Tell me what's wrong." He wasn't even responding to it the way he usually did, he just kept on staring at the steadily rising sun. It kind of worried her. Maybe all of this had burned him out?

Naruto wanted to thank Wolf for trying to help make him feel better, she had always been great at doing that. Still, this wasn't one of those easy to handle situations like his temper getting a bit out of hand, this was far more serious, "Liquid killed Master Miller and imitated him to get the drop on Snake on Codec."

That stopped Wolf's hand. She didn't know Liquid had gone that far to get an advantage during Snake's infiltration, and she found it to be grossly unnecessary. What if Snake had never shown up at all? Then he had more or less just butchered one of Naruto's precious people… to make sure that either way, if he had joined him or now, Naruto had nowhere else to go. The bastard, "I'm so sorry probie."

"That's why I can't just go right with you guys…" Naruto admitted, his eyes basically lifeless once the adrenaline stopped and the reality of the situation truly hit him, "There's somewhere I have to go first… and it's too dangerous to take you guys with me just for this. You guys don't have a stake in it. So I'll get you guys out first, then I'll handle my own personal business." He said, leaving things at that. And no one felt like questioning him on just what that business was. With Naruto, it was anyone's guess.

XxX

(One Month Later – March 2005 – Los Angeles, California)

Drained was the word to describe her if there was anything that could. One phone call that came to the house one month ago told Catherine that her father was dead. And that was it. No one told her or her mother anything about the body or if it would even be released to them, she wasn't even told how he died.

Her mother had been shocked at first and had consoled her for the first week, but it was evident that she wasn't hit nearly as hard as her daughter was with the news. For Catherine's mother, things went back to normal soon enough, even if Catherine still couldn't bear it. Eventually however, she had to think about it and one thought came to her mind; she kept thinking about how her older brother would have handled it.

Well, first of all he probably would have found out what had happened, but she was just 16 years old and in high school. She had no way of doing that; no connections, no intelligence on the matter of what could have happened, nothing like that at all. She was just a normal girl.

Second of all, speaking of her older brother, she hadn't heard from him in about five months. Not a single word. Who knew where he was or what he was doing? He might have even suffered a similar fate to her father, how would she have known? They wouldn't even give her any information on a retired soldier, why would they tell her about an active one that had been doing obscure operations for years?

Letting out a sigh as she arrived from walking to her home from afterschool evening tennis practice she admittedly just didn't care anymore. Coming to California to go to school was great at first; she got to do all of these things that she hadn't gotten to do in Alaska, she got to tell Naruto and her dad about all of the things she was doing and always felt like doing her best to make them proud.

Now she was dragging completely. She had been making straight a's prior to her father's death… but recently they had been suffering extensively due to her apathy. It just wasn't important. And there wasn't anyone to kick her butt into gear since Miller couldn't scold her over the phone and her mother was oftentimes gone for her work, now being one of those extended times.

She dropped her backpack at the door once she got inside. She wasn't going to even touch it until she left for school Monday morning anyway, opting to instead take her duffel bag upstairs with her to her room. As she reached the top of the stairs she saw a light on in her bedroom and the adjacent bathroom and held back a gasp. She set her bag down and slowly reached inside of it to pull out a small black kunai that she had 'borrowed' from her big brother's room in Alaska years ago before she left to come to California in the first place.

Slipping out of her tennis shoes to leave her in her socks, Catherine began slowly walking down the hall the way she had picked up to keep her footsteps from making noise on hard surfaces, keeping the kunai in a reverse grip with her free arm up in a possible defensive stance.

As she reached the wall right next to the bathroom she pressed herself against it as that was where she saw the shadow emanating from. Tightening her grip on the weapon, she prepared to hastily confront her home invader when a voice stopped her, "I already knew you were there Kitty. Don't you know you can never sneak up on me?" She let out a soft gasp and dropped the kunai from her hand, letting it clatter on the floor, "Hey, don't drop weapons."

She opened her mouth and closed it several times, not knowing what to even say right then, "A-Aniki…" She said hesitantly as she finally turned into the doorway and saw Naruto standing at the sink in her bathroom, washing his face and wearing civilian clothes; a pair of blue jeans and a sunburst orange shirt.

"Since when did you start calling me that?" Naruto said in a quiet but amused voice, a smile evident even as he kept washing his face, "But it really is good to hear your voice again." He was about to turn towards Catherine when he felt her considerably smaller body smash into his and wrap a hug around him tightly. He could feel her body shake in silent sobs and he just wrapped his arms around her, rubber her back gently, "I'm sorry…"

Sorry for what? He didn't know what to say. Sorry for not being able to do anything for Master Miller? Sorry for not being able to tell her a single thing about it without putting her in terrible danger? Sorry for not seeing her face for almost a year and a half? Sorry for even leaving and getting involved in all of his crazy bullshit in the first place? He didn't know. If he had to answer he probably would have said all of the above, whichever one of those things made her cry.

There was only so much he could really do, "I got the guy that did it." He said to her quietly. Maybe it would give her some kind of solace to let her know? He had no idea, but it couldn't hurt, "I don't know if that helps or not, I'm sorry." He repeated.

"Don't apologize." She said, burying her face in his chest as her quiet tears streamed down her face and stained his shirt, "You didn't do anything wrong… you never did." She turned her face up to his and gave him a brilliant smile, even through her crying, "It's just-… I'm so happy to see you again! I was so scared! I was scared that you had gotten captured, or that you were hurt again like last time, or even worse! I can't even believe that you're actually here!"

Naruto held her out at arm's length and looked her over having not seen her in over a year. She still had the pretty green eyes that were slightly puffy from crying, her curly blonde hair was put back in a ponytail, probably because she had just come from practice. At the moment she was wearing a white tennis dress with the back out of it. She was really growing up more and more every time he saw her, it was amazing to him.

Naruto moved past her and looked out into the hall, confusing her until he spoke, "Is your mom here?" He asked tentatively. He didn't want to answer any questions about why he happened to sneak in through a second story back window. There was no way he could explain that to a woman that didn't know him or like him one bit.

"She won't be back until midway through next week." Catherine said, wiping her eyes to regain her composure. Crying in front of him was certainly not cool as far as she was concerned, "You're not going to stay here that long either way are you?" She asked as if she already knew the answer.

"I just came to see you Kitty." He wished he could have made her happy and said yes, but things just weren't that simple. He had never missed being a genin in Konoha when things were so simple anymore than he did right then. At least there was a definite place to go to where he felt safe, now he wasn't sure where he would be going, but he knew what he was going to do, "I won't be staying that long though… I can't." And what he felt he had to do had nothing with staying anywhere near Los Angeles.

A sigh of disappointment came from Catherine before she merely grabbed his hand and dragged the confused Naruto across the hall into her room and pointed at the bed. He tilted his head in puzzlement before she rolled her eyes and pushed him down on it, curling up with him on the bed before he could ask what it was that he was in there for. He let her yawn and pull herself closer to him before he spoke up, "Um… what the hell?"

Not that he was a complete stranger to this sort of thing, having been with Sniper Wolf even if it had only been once, but this girl was like his sister. It was weird.

"You just said that you won't be here for long." Catherine said without opening her eyes, "So I'm going to enjoy the time I've got with you. Who knows if you'll actually come back the next time?" She cracked an eye to look at him, "What's the matter? You used to let me do stuff like this all the time when we were younger."

'Yeah, that was before you got all hot!' Naruto yelled in his mind and his face reflected it, 'You're sure not little anymore damn it!' Now if he had said that, then it really would have been weird, "So… you just want me to lay here while you sleep?"

"Yeah…" Catherine said softly in a content voice. God he was solid, "Just go to sleep Aniki… or tell me a story…"

Naruto snickered and let her legs intertwine with his to let her get comfortable, "I thought you were too old for any story I could tell you?"

"Let's just say I feel like I'm little again… and I've needed something to cheer me up." She said, poking him in the chest, "Now take your pick. Sleep or story. Just don't leave me alone again."

"Fine…" Naruto said with a smile on his face. If she was all he had left then he was going to make sure she was taken care of, even if he was an entire continent away he would keep her safe. He had other people he needed to keep safe as well, and he would protect all of them. He had to get stronger, he needed to be more than 'just a child'. But right now he couldn't stay with his sister the way she wanted to, the way she wanted to. That didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the time he had though, "Alright I've got it. I don't think I've told you the story about the Forest of Death before."

XxX

"_Yes sir, the entire unit was wiped out."_ Revolver Ocelot's voice said over a phone line, _"Those two are still alive, the brat made it out and disappeared to who knows where as well."_ Silence reigned for a minute before he spoke up again, _"The vector? Yes sir, FOXDIE should become activated soon enough… right on schedule."_ Once again he stopped talking to listen to some more questions, _"I recovered all of REX's dummy warhead data from Solid Snake just as you requested."_

"…"

"_No sir, my cover is still intact. Nobody knows who I really am. The DARPA Chief knew my identity, but I disposed of him before any harm was done."_ Once again he went silent to listen before speaking up, _"Yes. The inferior clone was the winner after all."_ He let out a chuckle, _"…That's right. Until the very end Liquid thought he was the inferior one."_ He then suddenly stopped talking as the man he had been speaking with told him something else, _"Yes sir I agree completely. It takes a well balanced individual such as yourself to rule the world."_

"…"

"_No sir. No one knows that you're really the _third_ one… Solidus. Now what should I do about the woman? Keep her under surveillance? Yes sir."_ He listened again and when he spoke once more his voice took on a satisfied tint, _"Yes sir. Thank you. Goodbye… Mr. President."_

*click*

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><p><strong>Alright, I think I've got a cool direction for things to go after this, and it will totally make sense whether you've played the games or not. It should be a good old time once the real stuff starts up again. I've got some space to fill, and plans are all ready to roll for the next segments people. <strong>

**Hope you all enjoyed. I'll catch you all around.**

**Kenchi out.**


	13. Back to the Grind

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. When I take over the world in ten years time these will be the things that I take control of first to consolidate my power over my empire. I will then commission the scientists and engineers to design the world's greatest weapon to assist me in keeping power.

You will all bear witness to Metal Gear KENCHI!

RAAARGH!

I have no idea what the KENCHI will be an acronym for, but I have at least ten years to think of that. And it'll shoot ICBMs that will somehow project Van Halen's "Runnin' With the Devil" into the ears of my targets right before it blows their asses sky high, just to let them know what they'll be doing in a minute or two.

You can clearly see how insane I am from this rant, so disregard this and enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 13: Back to the Grind**

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><p>Two days after his arrival in Los Angeles, Naruto had to say that it was refreshing to take some time to himself and not have to worry about taking orders or getting shot at or blown up. He had gotten Sniper Wolf, Johnny, and Meryl to Russia and after actually getting on his hands and knees and begging Olga to let them hook up with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, no prying questions asked by Sergei other than telling him they were survivors of the failed Shadow Moses Incident and leaving it at that, he had gotten them out. He would contact them once he got a clear chance to do it to make sure everything was going smoothly and to tell them what his next move would be.<p>

He now owed Olga a massive favor in the future, but he could easily deal with that unless it was something totally stupid or suicidal... in which case he would probably still do it just because he couldn't care less about his own general well-being. Maybe there was something wrong with his psyche or something, because he was sure that it wasn't natural to feel that way.

As he started to ponder his lifestyle, his experiences, and his habit of suppressing the more traumatic experiences that had occurred in his life and their combined effects on his state of mind, Naruto felt a hand pulling on one of his cheeks, "Aniki you were doing that weird spacing out thing again." Catherine told him as they both sat on a couch in the darkened living room of the house, her sitting in his lap comfortably and serenely as they watched TV.

"Sorry Kitty." Naruto said with an apologetic smile, giving her a squeeze that put a smile on her face as well.

Catherine was wearing an orange skirt with yellow lines running horizontally around it and a white t-shirt with an orange emblem across the chest. Naruto swore she was wearing it to tease him, because he currently didn't have a stitch of orange clothing with him. Due to the fact that they were just hanging out at her mother's home, Catherine had her hair down reaching her back instead of up in its usual ponytail and per what had become customary for her, she wore the necklace that Naruto had gifted her with years ago around her neck prominently.

Through Naruto's smile, Catherine couldn't help but let off a frown once she analyzed it, "Are you ever going to tell me?" She asked him in a concerned tone of voice.

"Tell you what?" Naruto responded, looking at the younger girl in his grasp, "You know what my job is… you've known for a long time what I do. Why would you possibly want to hear me talk about any of that?" Naruto really didn't want to start talking about his old missions, the older assignments he had been sent on. Catherine loved him and he didn't want her to know what kind of a monster he could be. Talking about killing was different once you could place the face someone you actually knew with the act itself.

"Because now that dad's…" Catherine hesitated to continue, but not talking about it wasn't going to turn back time or bring her father back, "Now that he's gone you don't have anyone to talk to about the things that have happened to you." Her eyes turned towards his, generating concern, "I might not be able to relate, but I can try. Just talking to other soldiers won't do anything for you. They won't think that anything that happened to you is important or a big deal at all."

As much as he wanted to refute that point he had to accept it once he thought about possibly talking to Snake about his experiences. Yeah, he would get no empathy there if he would even listen at all, and talking to Wolf wouldn't give him any unless he was injured, and even then it had to be the kind of injury that would put him on the shelf for a bit or else he'd just be told to rub some dirt in it and hop on up. No matter what he told Catherine, as she knew nothing of the things he had done, it would be basically assured that even his most tame story would affect her somehow.

This was the reason that he just couldn't understand. Why would she _want_ to try and come to terms with the things he had seen and done when she didn't have to? He never wanted her to see him like that. He wanted her to feel safe and secure around him, he didn't want Catherine to ever be afraid of him or the things he could do. He never even liked using any chakra techniques around her, even when they were younger.

Even if things weren't simple, he liked that whenever he came to see her he wasn't a uniform or a body with a weapon in its hands, he liked being her big brother. It made him feel a little bit normal even when he knew normal was the furthest thing away from possibly labeling him as. She didn't know anything about FOXHOUND or any counter-terrorist operations, nothing of the sort. To her for the last six years he had just been her older brother Naruto. The fact that nothing else mattered to her as far as that went made him feel great.

He wasn't weird, or a guy with freaky powers, or even a human weapon to her the way he was to pretty much everyone else. And even though they weren't related she seemed to love him unconditionally regardless. He had never had anyone look at him the way Catherine always had. Even when she was younger the look of adoration he could see in her eyes made him feel important just for being there and the older they got and the more distance that seemed to be put between them, when he returned he could just sense her fondness for him grow… and that wasn't even close to the word needed to describe the way she felt about him.

Naruto shook his head. He really didn't want to tell her these things about himself, "Kitty, there's just some stuff that you don't need to hear. I'm not going to sit here and tell you about me killing people just because you think I need to talk to someone about it."

Catherine pouted in his lap and crossed her arms over her chest, "Well guess who's sitting on who and isn't moving until he talks about himself." She said with an air of finality, "And you're going to get hungry sooner or later so-." She was cut off when Naruto's stomach growled loudly, putting a smirk on her face, "Yep, right on time. That train's never late."

"Yeah… I'm hungry." Naruto said, agreeing with what his stomach was not willing to help him hide, "You're forgetting something though." Catherine blinked in confusion as to what she forgot. Naruto then suddenly stood up out of the couch with little to no effort whatsoever, "I'm super-strong, and you're probably 100 pounds at your heaviest. Do you think it would bother me to carry your little butt all over the kitchen while I look for something to eat?"

Catherine let out a gasp of surprise at being picked up off of the ground so abruptly and started wiggling around, finally getting herself loose to fall onto the ground. Naruto stopped walking and looked down at her apologetically until she smirked up at him mischievously and tackled him to the ground around his legs, "I'm not dropping this Aniki. You're going to talk to me." She said as she continued to hug around his legs tightly.

Naruto rolled his eyes at his sister's attempt to hold him down and make her talk to him, "What part of 'super-strong' don't you get by now?" Naruto declared and he bent forward and wrapped his arms around Catherine's waist, then choosing to lay directly back to pry her off of his legs and lightly suplex her over his body to free himself. His point proven in his mind, Naruto sat back up but found Catherine now latched on his back with her legs around his waist.

"I'm not going anywhere." She stated plainly, pressing her chest against his back as she held onto him.

Getting her off of him wouldn't have been an issue at all if he had been feeling violent, but he doubted he could ever harm Catherine even if she held him at gunpoint. She wasn't trying to hurt him, she just wanted to help.

Sighing to himself, Naruto twisted his upper body and snuck an elbow between them, eventually making it so that he could grab her with one arm and pull her around to his front to face him. And there they sat, Naruto on the floor holding up Catherine in his lap as they sat face-to face with each other, blue eyes staring into green as she still held herself close to him.

From what he knew about 'normal' teenagers, Catherine being 16 years old shouldn't have seemed this determined about something that seemed so trivial on the surface, and yet here she was staring him down. Maybe if he gave her the 'get out of the way or I'm going to kill you' glare she'd get off of him, but once again he could never do anything like that to her, "Why does this matter to you so much?" He finally asked her.

Catherine's eyes softened as she looked at her dear older brother, "You are my very best friend. You always were, and most of the things I've done were so that I could make dad or you proud of me… don't ask me why you're in that." She finished, slightly flustered, "But the thing is, I feel like I don't know you at all, nothing important anyway, and that really bothers me… because I love you."

"I love you too Kitty." Naruto told her with a smile on his face. She had told him this right before he left Alaska to join the armed forces in the first place when he gave her the necklace. He had thought it was the sweetest thing in the world when she had told him that back then. She had refrained from saying it since then, but he had only needed to hear it once for it to have its impact, "You know that."

Catherine shook her head and averted her gaze away from him, "No, not like that." She said, moving a few bangs of her hair out of her face, "The truth is, I used to have a massive crush on you Aniki." The embarrassment in her speech was clear from the blush on her face, "And when you joined the army it never went away. Then when you stayed in contact with me it got bigger… and now I'm in love with you." She admitted before leaning forward towards Naruto and placing a peck on his lips. Once she broke through that wall of self-restraint, she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a longer more passionate kiss that was more akin to her feelings for him.

She shut her eyes when she went in so she never saw the look on his face, though she felt she could safely assume that it was shocked. Catherine was completely terrified of what his response would be until she felt him start to kiss her back, 'He isn't pushing me away!' She was overjoyed by the mere thought of it.

As a fact that had been expressed regularly ever since she had entered the public school system, Catherine knew that she was attractive. The boys that regularly talked to her didn't care that she was actually smart unless they figured that the aspect of her personality that wasn't a ditzy stereotypical blonde girl could be looked past, making her an easy catch for them. They were simple enough to deal with, merely by alluding to the fact that her older brother killed enemy soldiers with his bare hands and she never knew when he'd drop in got those cowards to leave her alone in that respect. Hey, even left abroad Naruto still helped her out. Her looks never meant much to her. Even so, knowing that Naruto would kiss her back, it made her feel beautiful because he was the only one whose opinion of her mattered in the end.

Catherine leaned her body weight forward and knocked Naruto to his back, still steadily kissing him, now fervently engaging with her tongue. He hadn't pushed her away and said something like, 'Kitty this is wrong' or 'I can't see you like that' or anything that she thought he would have said to her on the matter. He simply held her around the hips and kept her close until she pulled away and looked down at him, breathing heavily from the length of the kiss.

From his back on the ground, Naruto could only look up to the girl sitting on top of him. Those damned bright eyes of hers paralyzed him, he could still see the shine in them even in the low light of the living room. He didn't know why he kissed her back. No warning signs in his head went off trying telling him that what she was doing was wrong when she started. But once the gravity of the situation hit him he frowned, "You don't love me like that…" He said lowly, as if it hurt him to say it at all.

Staying where she was on top of him since he hadn't even tried to move from the position yet, Catherine nodded her head, "Yes I do. This isn't some way of me grieving for dad like I know you're going to say… I'm not projecting anything onto you like that. I cried all of my tears out already, but losing him just made me realize how much I didn't want to lose you too."

He was her best friend at a time when she had none. Naruto had taken care of her as if they truly were flesh and blood when he had absolutely no reason to. He was more than just some tenant that used to live with her dad, he wasn't some stranger, and he was more than a brother to her. Did she need to show him how much he meant to her?

Catherine's hands snaked toward her shirt and began to pull it up, but only got to her navel before powerful hands from under her sharply yanked them back down in place. She locked eyes with a stern looking Naruto, "Don't." He more or less ordered, and his tone left no argument for the moment. She got off of him and watched as he stood up and extended a hand to help her up, one that she accepted.

Slowly walking over to the couch they had previously been on to sit down in, she watched as Naruto himself paced around in front of her, seemingly fighting with his own mind. Catherine hoped that she hadn't broken him or anything like that. It would probably have been funny if she had actually been trying to tease him, but she hadn't been. Teasing only went so far and that was _way_ off limits when it came to poking fun.

Eventually he stopped pacing and turned to face her. The seriousness was still there, but there was concern as well as he opened his mouth to speak, "What the fuck?" He stated abruptly, "You're 16 years old and you're trying to strip down on top of me! And for what?"

It wasn't that Catherine wasn't pretty because if he said such he would be a damnable liar, but this wasn't like what had happened with him and Wolf. Neither of them were in regular mortal danger, he knew Catherine way before she was ever even a teenager so it would possibly be strange… for God's sake he watched her grow up. It was also no one's birthday so that half-assed excuse could not be used.

To say the least it was incredibly sudden to switch his worldview on her from little sister to girl that loved him. A little warning would have been nice.

"To show you that I do really love you the way I say I do Aniki." Catherine said resolutely. She would never have even considered anything like that otherwise. She wasn't that kind of girl, she was better than that, "I didn't know any other way to show you."

Naruto actually hated girls that threw themselves at others. The kiss was one thing, taking her clothes off was another altogether. When he looked at her though, he could feel that she was damn near petrified that he was angry with her, that he would reject her. No matter how surprised he had been he would never do that. He went over and sat down beside her, "So you really think about me like that?" He asked her, getting a nod in return, "How long?"

"I always had the crush on you." She admitted, moving a bang of her curly hair out of her face again, a nervous tick she had for years, "Back when I first pulled you out of the water and got you all cleaned up I thought you were cute… I always loved the whisker-marks by the way." She said with a small giggle before getting serious again, "Then you became 'big brother' when I realized how nice you really were. Teaching you English was a blast when you'd flip out and start cursing in Japanese when you messed stuff up."

"Hey, learning a new language was hard." Naruto tried to defend, getting another laugh out of Catherine, "So keep going." He insisted.

Catherine nodded and did just that, "You would always make time to talk with me, or just sit down and watch TV when I was by myself even though you hated TV. You would tell me those stupid stories that I love so much, you even let me sleep in your bed with you all of the time. I could talk to you about anything… remember when I talked you back when I first started growing bo-."

"-Yeah, I remember that." Naruto cut her off abruptly, knowing what she was going to say. It wasn't that hard to deduce, especially when she grabbed her breasts to illustrate her point. What were they at this point, C-cups? Damn it why did she have to be hot? He didn't need to be thinking about that right now.

"Feeling uncomfortable?" Catherine asked him with a wry smile on her face, only to get Naruto's squinted eyed look of intense focus directed right at her, "Well anyway, I guess it happened when I saw you in the hospital after you came back from Iraq for sure. Before that, I used to talk about you so much in school people would say I had a brother complex… and I'd say he's not my real brother so it doesn't count." She said, sticking out her tongue playfully, "Why is it so hard to believe that I love you Aniki?"

'Because you're too sweet and innocent to love me.' And that was the reason he didn't want to tell her about himself. What would she say? How do you tell the sweetest girl in the world that you've ended more lives than you can count? How do you tell her that you know where you came from, another world? And he damn sure wasn't going to tell her about the demon in his gut waiting for a moment to control him and escape if he grew overwhelmingly angry, "Don't love me Kitty. Not like that. Not the way that you want to. It's not worth it."

Catherine let out a sigh and leaned to the side to set her head on Naruto's shoulder, "That's not even you talking right now." She said with full confidence in the matter, "You know you want to. If you didn't even want to think of me that way then why didn't you just push me off of you when I was kissing you?" A smirk came over her face, "Why were you thinking of my chest just now while we were talking?" She pushed herself off of his shoulder and twisted her body on the couch to face him before giving him another kiss, this one far more reserved now that her pent-up emotion had gotten out earlier. Pulling away, she looked him in the eyes again, "If you don't want to love me like that then why do you let me kiss you? Now stop being stupid." She said with a firm inflection in her voice.

Naruto raised an eyebrow at her, "What do you mean 'stop being stupid'?" And once again he held onto Catherine tightly as she snuck onto his lap again.

"Look at you." Catherine said, still unyielding as she spoke, "Look into my eyes right now and tell me honestly that you don't adore me." And of course he couldn't, "I know you do because I adore you Aniki. You're my favorite person in the entire world… so open up to me. I don't want you going off doing whatever it is you do, and you don't have to talk to me about it right now, but I don't want you putting yourself at risk without realizing that you do have someone waiting on you."

With nothing but sincerity and intent on her face, Naruto couldn't help but touch his forehead against hers gently, "…There you go… You didn't need to try to fuck me to tell me that." He quipped.

"What if I wanted to anyway?" Catherine said quietly, rubbing a hand on Naruto's cheek.

Naruto just turned his head and kissed her hand, "Come back when you're 18… ask me then." He said in a teasing voice, grinning at her once he saw her pout in his lap. As far as she was concerned he was hers damn it. Who knew what kind of woman he'd wind up meeting gallivanting halfway around the world? How was she going to compete with some foreign woman?

Actually, come to think of it…

"Aniki…" Catherine started to say in a pleasant voice, though the smile on her face was too sweet to have a positive connotation behind it, "Are you a virgin?"

Naruto could only look down at her, "…Are you?"

"Yes." She chirped brightly as she stroked the bottom of his chin with one finger in a disarming manner.

"Good for you!" Naruto exclaimed before turning to the side and dumping Catherine on the couch as he stood up and pointed at her, "Keep it that way!" He saw her roll her eyes and heard her mumble something under her breath, "What was that?"

"…Can't make me." She repeated. Catherine then looked up and saw Naruto about to break into an old-school rant of epic proportions from the frozen look of horror on his face. She could have just said that she was kidding, but to hell with that, she was going to get some satisfaction out of this by playing on his propensity to overreact, "Of course if you're that worried about it I could always lose it in the arms of the man I trust... so how about it?" She finished as she batted her eyes at him.

No amount of soldier's humor that he picked up over the course of five years could keep the red off of his face, "Don't joke like that."

Catherine was still smiling at him, "Who said I was joking?"

Naruto's eye twitched at her casual attitude, "…I'm sleeping on the couch tonight." He muttered as he sat back down on the couch next to Catherine who curled up with him as the conversation came to an end and they started watching TV again. Eventually Naruto spoke up once more, "*sigh* You know, if you really want me to tell you the things that have happened to me since I became a soldier it's going to take all night."

Catherine shrugged and got comfortable, "You don't have to leave until Wednesday, so get cracking." She said, prepared to listen to him tell her whatever he wanted. She just wanted to be closer to him, 'I do still love you. I'll let it drop for now, I'm patient, but for now I'll do what I can to help you. However little that just so happens to be.' Before he could think of where to begin, Catherine brought up another point, "…By the way, you never got to get anything to eat."

Naruto's stomach took that moment to chime in, agreeing with her final point, "Fine… Food first, then I'll start talking."

XxX

At around 2 in the morning, Naruto found himself awakened by a noise he hadn't heard since he had entered California. Untangling himself from Catherine carefully, he slipped out of her bed and headed downstairs before touching his hand to his ear to access his Codec, "Yes?"

"_Naruto Uzumaki."_ An older female Russian voice said to him to confirm he was there, _"This is him, correct?"_

"Who is this?" Naruto asked, slightly on edge at the sound of the voice. The only person with a Russian accent he knew was Olga, and this woman was speaking English. No way would Olga ever start a conversation in English with him, that would make it too easy for him and the girl apparently liked to see him struggle, "How did you even get this frequency?" Other than Olga Gurlukovich the only people still alive that had his frequency were the three that left Shadow Moses with him, Naomi Hunter, Otacon, and Solid Snake. This woman was none of them.

The woman let out a laugh over the line at his paranoia, as well founded as it was, _"Calm down. My name is Natasha Romanenko. I was a member of Solid Snake's support team during the Shadow Moses Incident. I was a weapons analyst and assisted him with information on his equipment and the equipment of the enemies he faced. And you Naruto Uzumaki use very strange equipment from what Snake said."_ She sounded excited to be speaking with him, or maybe that was just him.

"Hm." Naruto said as he dropped himself in a chair, "So what do you want with me?"

"_It's simple. I can't reach Snake."_

"Snake doesn't want to be reached apparently." Naruto said dismissively. It wasn't a surprise from what Naruto had gleaned from him and his personality during their time working together, "If you were on his support team are you really that surprised by it?"

"_No, not really, but in this case since I can't reach him I need your help."_

"I don't know where he is." Naruto stated flat out, "He and Otacon… I hope they're living good, but I couldn't help you find one of them. I could for a price though." He finished with a grin that she obviously couldn't see.

"_Well then could I simply speak with you?"_ Natasha requested before realizing how suspicious that sounded and decided to explain, _"I'm asking you this because I'm currently writing a book on the events that transpired during the incident."_

Naruto was rather shocked by that, "You're going to what?" He said incredulously. He was expecting this to just die quietly, with only those of them that had actually been there knowing anything of it.

"_Yes."_ Natasha confirmed, _"I have the entire recorded conversations of the event between the support team of Snake and the man himself, and you seem to come up quite a bit despite the lack of knowledge of anything you did or your place in the incident."_ She started speaking in a heartfelt manner, _"I've found out too much because someone close to me gave me this information to protect me, but with all of the conspiracies and everything I've learned I can't let it be hidden. I would like your help."_

Naruto ran a hand down his face and sighed, "This never gets back to me understood? You can use my name since you're going to anyway and you're going to use everyone else's, and you can talk about the stuff I did. I can even tell you my point of view of how everything started since I was there for the beginning of the uprising. But you can't put it in first-person from my perspective, and you can't say that I told you any of it myself."

He didn't care about talking to someone that was actually there or had something to do with it. Even if he didn't tell her anything, she had enough on him from conversations conducted through the incident over Codec to place him in the book. If he was going to be in the damn thing anyway he wanted to at least make sure that the truth was told… or at least as much of the truth as he wanted to be told. He was not going to be painted as an antagonist since he was sure that any conversation about him was far from flattering for the most part.

Besides, this was a fantastic way to let Catherine know of what had occurred without putting her at risk. If this book was really going to get into the Shadow Moses Incident, and it was really going to be published, then he was going to make sure that it talked about what happened to Master Miller… hell, maybe she could write up one hell of a death scene for Liquid after what happened.

"_That would be wonderful. A firsthand account from you would be great, the last man standing from the FOXHOUND unit."_ Natasha said, _"It was rather bothersome, but I was able to dredge up background info on all key players in the event, from everyone on our side, to the antagonists so there's no need for you to say anything of your background here."_ Good, because he probably would have flat out lied anyway, _"I know about all of the nuances, I know about FOXDIE, the origin of Snake and Liquid, the intended cover up by Jim Houseman, and the major conspiracy from the shadowy figures behind it."_

Naruto's eyes lit up in the dark of the night, "So you know about the people behind all of that crap?" That was exactly what he was looking for. This went further than just that punk ass Secretary of Defense Jim Houseman. If it hadn't then the airstrike would never have been called off and he'd be dead right then, "Maybe you can help me?"

Natasha's voice sounded apologetic as she responded, _"I know of them, not anything about them. I don't know how to get anymore on them. But just alluding to the existence of them would be enough for now."_

'It would be enough for you, not me.' Naruto thought to himself as he found his way blocked once more towards finding out what exactly was going on around him, "Fine, are you ready then? I don't know what you'll think is useful, so I'll start from what I think is important."

"_Whatever you have to add would be perfect."_

"Good. So I guess I'll start with when I started seeing the Next-Generation Special Forces acting stranger and stranger…"

XxX

(April 2005 – Lyon, France – Naruto: Age 18)

He had spent that night telling Natasha all that he thought she needed to know of his experience at Shadow Moses Island and gave her directions to make sure that whenever the book was completed that she needed to send a copy to Catherine. When asked why, he replied that it was just important to him that she found these things out and that he couldn't tell her himself.

The rest of his time in Los Angeles had been rather boring by his standards. He had done what Catherine had stated to be the 'usual fare', with him meeting her friends and showing them that he was real and not just a figment of photos that she kept of her family. He got to see her at tennis practice and got to see how she usually lived. He was also forced to promise to come back soon. He didn't know how soon that would be, but he assured her that he would. He said he'd have at least one souvenir for her though.

Then he called Olga to tell her he was on his way back to Russia and to inform the others… and he was told to get his ass on the first flight he could manage to get and take himself to Lyon, no arguments or complaints. She would explain everything once he was there, but he needed to actually be there.

So here he was, sitting at an outdoor café waiting on her, a pot of coffee on the table and a pair of cups right in front of him. It was still rather brisk outdoors and there was an overcast as Naruto wore a pair of blue jeans, a black shirt and an orange windbreaker, drumming his fingers on the table he sat at impatiently. He was already irritable since he spoke terrible French, only enough to keep himself out of jail and barely that much if he were to be honest, and asking for directions to or from anywhere was a pain in his ass.

"Very smart Uzumaki." Naruto heard from behind him and turned around in his chair to look at the speaker, "You picked the closest possible meeting place adjacent to the airport. How inconspicuous." The young female Russian accent finished with a sarcastic tone. It was Olga, still with her short silver hair wearing a closed black leather jacket, black gloves, a black skirt, and knee-high black boots.

Naruto turned himself forward again and rolled his eyes as she walked past him and made to pull out the chair across from him, "I don't need to hear this crap right now. If it wasn't twice as expensive I would have never left the fucking airplane terminal to wait for you." He gave her a once over and his lips twitched in a slight smirk, "You look like you just came from a funeral or something."

Olga growled lowly at him, "Keep running your mouth and it'll be yours…"

"Anytime princess…" Naruto retorted quietly. For some reason the thought of a fight, especially one with Olga, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up in excitement. It had been too long for him since he thought someone was going to try and kill him. What kind of sick bastard was he? He missed it, 'Man, I've got problems…' Naruto thought to himself.

Quickly regaining her cool, putting the thought of a return match against Naruto out of her mind for the moment, Olga took a seat and pulled up to the table closely, as did Naruto, "Shalashaska is in Lyon right now."

"Ocelot?" Naruto whispered questioningly as he remembered Ocelot's alias. He then remembered that he never killed him, but he just assumed that Snake had gotten to him. Hell, Snake had killed the rest of them except for Wolf, and that was just because Naruto got to her first before he had a good chance at it, "He's here right now? How do you know? As a matter of fact why are you even here?"

Olga took a moment to reach forward and grab one of the cups there to pour herself some coffee, "We were contracted to work a mission down in South Africa. I'm to be heading up the efforts down there. By the way, speaking of leading, I brought your people here as well." She said as she began placing cream and sugar into her drink.

That was not a bad thing at all. At least he wouldn't be by himself. Naruto leaned back in the chair, "So how's that been working by the way?"

A shrug came from Olga, "Very well as a matter of fact. Even when Shalashaska visited my father's main base where they all were stationed he merely assumed that Sniper Wolf had escaped before the clean-up crews came to cover up what they could of Shadow Moses since she never got a second run-in with Solid Snake. He didn't bother asking about it or them directly. And that girl Meryl, she took to wearing a balaclava around anyone other than those in that trio you sent me in case she could be recognized. My father knows nothing of her or Johnny by the way. Shalashaka was very quiet on exactly what went wrong on that island." A smirk came to her face, "After hearing your explanation I can see why. Really, wires?"

"Why fight like everybody else? If it works it works." Naruto said with a smirk in return. He told her what had transpired at Shadow Moses Island when they had met in Russia. Olga kept in contact with him in secret, he didn't know why she bothered doing so though. Why even talk to him at all? He didn't understand, but he definitely appreciated it. In exchange for getting her the direct services of the world's greatest sniper she helped him, "Why are you telling me about Ocelot though? Why help me at all?" He felt he had to ask, "He and your dad Sergei are close aren't they? You know what I want to do to Ocelot."

A frown crossed Olga's pretty face, scar notwithstanding, "I do not trust Shalashaska. I can't prove it, I can't explain why, but I cannot help but to despise the man. He makes my skin crawl. You, at least you have honor. I feel safe when I turn my back on you because I know that you would not try to stick a knife in it for no good reason." Her smirk returned, "And I haven't given you a reason to do so yet."

Naruto rubbed under his nose with a grin on his face, "Well I try. No way I'd ever turn on you Olga, I personally like having more friends than enemies in my life. Especially since most of my enemies I can't see."

"I'm not a ninja Uzumaki." Olga retorted as she took a sip of her coffee, "If you and I are to have it out I want you to look into my eyes while I'm kicking you around. Just so you know that I'm better than you."

"Likewise." Naruto replied, understanding that there were just some people that you wanted to duel, even if you _could_ get rid of them without them knowing, "You were saying though?"

Olga realized he wanted her back on topic as she then looked away, "But no, I do not trust him. His hare-brained scheme would have gotten my father and our men nuked had we gone to the island to assist in the uprising. He is still in my father's ear by the way, telling him to wait and another weapon like Metal Gear REX will make itself known, and it will be his for the taking. He is taking advantage of my father's ambition… to bring Mother Russia back to power in the world stage. That's why if he were to meet with an accident of sorts, or if he were to disappear never to be heard from again… it would help me sleep much better at night."

"I'll see what I can do." Naruto said with full confidence. He wanted Ocelot captured so that he could ask him a few questions, generally about exactly how much he knew about what befell him in 2003. Ocelot was his only link at this point and in this case Olga was a godsend with her information, "Do you know anything that would help me get to him?" Tracking and locating people of interest was not Naruto's forte.

"Da." Olga said with a nod as she took another sip, "However it's flimsy at best. I need another day to make sure what I have is concrete enough for you to act on. I'm in something of a hurry though. I need to get down to South Africa to begin working there. I cannot leave my men there without me for too long. You understand don't you? I'm actually here to procure some ammunition for them as well."

Naruto at this point poured himself some coffee as well, "Well yeah, of course I understand."

Olga didn't owe him anything. This was a mutual chance to get what they both wanted, one that she couldn't be caught taking herself. That was where he came in, and he could ensure that this would not be traced back to her leaking the needed information since he was a de facto enemy of her father due to him having had it out with Ocelot and assisting in ruining the Shadow Moses Incident. How would Sergei Gurlukovich think that Olga told him how to get to Ocelot? He didn't even know they worked together like this, and that was by design. Their professional relationship was supposed to be a secret.

Olga set aside her cup and leaned forward, "Discretion would be paramount if you were to actually take this off of my hands Uzumaki." She warned him, "This cannot come back to me. I do not want my father to believe I'm betraying him." She let out a small laugh, "If anything I'm merely trying to weed a snake out of the Garden of Eden."

'Cute little use of allegory.' Naruto thought with a smile, "Well then you're lucky that you made nice with a real deal ninja Olga. I've got this, just point me in a general direction and let me loose."

"A ninja huh?" She replied in an amused manner, "Very well. Tomorrow night I'll have everything you need to begin. The others will as well once you find them." She said as reached both of her hands out across the table as if she wanted Naruto to take hold of them. He did just that, and Olga let go of a small slip of paper in one of his hands when he did, "I hope you enjoyed your little vacation so far." She finished as she rose to her feet and put on a pair of sunglasses, "It'll be over in a day or two."

With the conversation being over, Naruto couldn't help but get in one last jibe, though it wasn't really an insult at all despite the fact that he'd know what it would do to piss her off, "You know I didn't think it was possible, you're actually prettier than you usually are when you wear normal clothes." He said to her as she got a distance away.

Olga froze in midstep but did not turn around to face him as she responded, "And you're still an enormous jackass no matter what kind of clothes you're wearing." She joked dryly before she continued to walk away.

XxX

'Sucking at French sucks.' Naruto thought to himself as he walked through the streets while holding a suitcase, looking for the address that Olga wrote on the slip of paper she gave him. He couldn't even ask people for directions since even if he knew how, he probably wouldn't understand their answer. At least he was on the right street now, a main street, and he even managed to find the hotel that matched the name of the one Olga gave him. Did she pay to put him up in there? Because it was incredibly ritzy.

Naruto walked in and went to the front desk where he was greeted with a smile by the girl there and returned it with a grin. At least he knew enough French to ask his question, "Is there a room booked for Naruto Uzumaki?"

The girl punched in his name in the computer and her eyes lit up when his name surfaced and his room number was given, "Yes sir, according to this you are booked in room 518, one bed, for a three night stay. Would you like maid service?" She asked as she stood to get him his room key.

"No, that's okay. I'm a neat guy." He said as she returned and handed it to him, "Thank you."

The girl simply nodded and retook her seat, "If you have any issues feel free to call the front desk sir. We hope you enjoy your stay."

With that, Naruto left the desk and headed over to the elevator to reach his floor. As he rode the elevator, the grin never really left his face, "So Olga got me a room huh? That better not count as another favor I owe her later…" He said to himself as the doors opened and he stepped out to begin looking for his room, not taking very long at all to locate it.

Once he entered the room he set his suitcase at the foot of his bed and took a seat on it with a sigh, "Ocelot's my link…" Naruto remarked to himself quietly. If he could find and catch Ocelot he could get his questions answered… or at least attempt to. The stupid rabbit hole of inquiries seemed to get bigger and bigger every day. Why was he taken by FOXHOUND's last medical chief Dr. Clark? Why did she have the right to do it and get away with it cleanly? Who were the ones behind all of the shadowy crap that happened at Shadow Moses Island that forced Snake into action? And how the fuck did Ocelot even get away without a trace in the first place? Where could he have gone?

At that moment a knock came at his door, getting him to perk up at attention before he narrowed his eyes. As he stood up he flicked his right wrist out to shoot a hidden kunai on a spring-loaded wire into his grasp, arming him with the small black blade just in case it was needed. He looked through the peephole and saw nothing, getting an irritable growl out of him.

"Calm down Naruto." With that voice, familiar red hair came into view as Meryl stepped back in view of the peephole with her hands on her hips, "You're in a bad mood already and no one's even said hi to you yet."

Retracting his kunai back into the sleeve of his jacket, Naruto opened the door, "I just got here not even five minutes ago. What, did you guys follow me from the café or what?"

Meryl had a sly grin on her face as she walked into the room, followed by Johnny, "From the airport actually." She corrected gleefully, "Wolf had eyes on you from the moment you walked outside. Why do you think Olga was able to find you so fast? Besides, our rooms are on both sides of yours anyway."

It was kind of weird to see Meryl and Johnny wearing civilian clothes, with Meryl wearing a dark red t-shirt with a black and silver explosion design covering most of the front as well as a pair of black jeans. Johnny had on an aqua colored bucket hat covering his blonde hair to go with his sideburns/beard combination, a pair of orange sunglasses, an open jean jacket with a white shirt underneath, and blue jeans.

Naruto let out a gulp, "Man I'm glad she doesn't feel like shooting me anymore." He said as he turned around only for someone to grab a hold of him. It didn't feel hostile even though there was an air of danger that came with the person holding him, "Wolf?"

"Yes little probie?" Wolf responded with a smile on her face as she held onto Naruto tightly and kicked the door to the room shut with all of them inside, "I hope you took care of whatever your business was. Did you miss me?" She was wearing a tight white jacket that was unzipped enough to expose a good view of her cleavage, a white pair of leather pants, and white heels.

"Of course Wolf." Naruto answered rather nervously. Seriously, there was something about the woman that just felt like he was always walking on a razor's edge around her… and he liked it. Yes, he had problems. He had been aware of this for a few years by this point.

Wolf gave him a short peck on the back of the neck, "Good boy." She said as she let him go, "And you look all healed up too. I swear I will never get used to how fast you get over your injuries."

"Yeah Boss." Johnny said in an impressed voice, "You looked half-past dead when we got to Russia. You didn't even flinch when that doctor said he had to re-break your arm to reset it right."

Naruto didn't need to be reminded of that, it pissed him off immensely. It also hurt like a son of a bitch since it took _way_ more than the doctor was willing to give him to anesthetize him; no matter what any of them would say he couldn't get more to numb his arm. Then he jerked his shoulder back into the socket after yanking it out, and Naruto would be damned if he was going to give that sadistic bastard the satisfaction of yelling in pain.

Once again, another shining example of why he and hospitals, even really shady ones that didn't need him to tell them his identity, never got along.

Able to see the perturbed look on Naruto's face, Johnny quickly changed the subject, "Um… Miss Gurlukovich said that she had something for you under your bed that you would probably like."

Raising an eyebrow, Naruto moved past them and lifted the mattress only to grin when he found Gray Fox's sword sitting right there seemingly waiting on him. Laughing to himself, Naruto picked it up and held it in its sheath tightly, "Heh, this is awesome."

Meryl shook her head at seeing Naruto holding the sword, grinning like a kid, "I'll ask you the same thing I did when you took that sword with you when we left Shadow Moses; can you even use that thing?"

There was no way he was leaving that thing behind. A great soldier used that sword to save his ass and he wasn't about to just let it sit there to rust and be forgotten about, "I practiced for a month in Russia." Naruto disputed in his own defense, getting a facepalm from Meryl, "What?"

"A month isn't good enough to learn how to use a sword!" Meryl argued back. Why was someone so good at his job so weird? She wouldn't get that way if she got as skilled as Naruto or Snake would she? Then again Sniper Wolf was kind of strange… and the rest of FOXHOUND that she had been in contact with had been messed up in some way too. That did not bode well for her.

"I already knew how to use it… kind of." Naruto said weakly, and he wasn't really lying. He could use a sword… just not very well when compared to people that were formally trained to do it, "But anyway, do you guys know why we're here?" If they were here it probably wasn't just to say hi.

Sniper Wolf nodded and took a seat on Naruto's bed, "Revolver Ocelot is here, you are here for Revolver Ocelot… for whatever reason you want him dead." She said in a chiding tone of voice, "You're going to tell us why this is a big deal to you, aren't you?"

Naruto took on a firm stance, "He's the only one that knows what all really went down at Shadow Moses… and there's more than that." He sighed and from the sound of desperation in his voice, something that got everyone's attention, "Someone I talked to while I was gone apparently had an ear in on pretty much everything that happened at Shadow Moses and told me something that's pretty fucked up. Ocelot has the hard disk with all of the test data from REX on it."

Wolf frowned visibly at hearing that information, "That is… extremely disconcerting." She had to admit that a guy like Ocelot holding data on Metal Gear REX was downright terrifying, "What would he want with it?"

Meryl started soundboarding ideas, "Maybe sell it? Make his own improved Metal Gear? Maybe he's working for someone else? I don't know." She saw the destroyed REX after Snake and Naruto's battle with it. She could only imagine what the fight was like in person because the entire hangar was a flaming wreck, "So that's why you're going to kill Ocelot?"

Naruto shook his head, "I'm not killing Ocelot, I'm going to capture him alive and then I'm going to beat his ass until he tells me what I want to know." He said as he punched into his palm before noticing Wolf smirk at him, "What's with that face?"

"You couldn't torture a live fish that was already out of water little probie." She teased, ignoring the glare from Meryl at insulting Naruto. As far as Meryl was concerned, after Shadow Moses he was as good as gold, "That interrogation would be the same as you beating on a brick wall, no difference in the result. You're too nice to torture someone you don't hate, and you don't hate anyone."

Naruto rolled his eyes and spoke lowly, "You said a lot of stuff like that about something else before I fucked you six months ago and how'd that turn out again?" He said it in a quiet enough tone that only she could hear him and he swore that he saw some red on her cheeks for a moment, 'Yes! I finally got you back, dattebayo! Naruto Uzumaki: 1, Sniper Wolf: 124… man that was lame even in my head.'

Johnny scratched the side of his face, "Uh, could you guys speak up so that other people could hear your conversation? Some of us don't really know what's going on here."

Meryl let out a groan. Johnny was a nice guy and everything but when it came to tasks more difficult than basic tasks, he was prone to screwing up, missing details, etcetera. She had to cover his ass several times with their grunt work since they had fallen in with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries by way of Naruto, "Johnny-boy you've got to focus. You're gonna get us killed." She said, "It's simple. Naruto wants Ocelot alive. Ocelot is in Lyon. We're in Lyon." She punched her palm eagerly, "So we're going to get the drop on Ocelot, break off a foot or two in his ass, and drag him off to parts unknown!"

"That's basically it." Naruto said with a grin on his face before turning to Meryl, "And I have to say, I like the enthusiasm." Meryl just winked at him in response.

Wolf laughed slightly and shook her head in amusement, "You should have seen her when we were in Russia and she was doing daily work with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries. She's like you except with red hair, female parts, no real experience to speak of, no special skills, and no superpowers." She finished as Meryl glowered at her, "And we haven't had to question her sanity yet."

"Ah." Naruto said in understanding, "So she's basically like a more fun me that's actually sexy, and without the futile nightly attempts to suppress PTSD." He gave a thumbs up, "Cool." He then turned towards Sniper Wolf, "And my jutsu aren't superpowers, that would imply that I just wound up with them. I worked for my moves." Wolf just made a 'blah, blah, blah' motion with her hand.

Johnny looked at Naruto in confusion, "You have PTSD Boss?"

"Since I was 12." Naruto confirmed whole-heartedly with no shame, "…I've personally seen tons of stuff that would make you crap your pants. Seriously."

From watching Zabuza Momochi kill over two dozen men with nothing more than a kunai in his mouth and a lack of the use of his arms, to fighting off giant snakes and Orochimaru in the Forest of Death, to fighting Gaara, to his own stuff with the Kyuubi… yeah, some of that shit gave him nightmares. And then he got to combine all of those 'cherished memories' with this world's guns, smart bombs, nuclear weapons, torturous experiments on his person, and all of the scary movies that Catherine made him watch with her over the years. Needless to say, he had a special concoction of crazy going on inside of his head.

Wolf didn't know how to take that conversation any further than it had already gone so she just decided to change the subject, "So… Ocelot?"

Luckily, Naruto was more than willing to get off of that topic altogether as he replied far too nonchalantly for what they had just been talking about, and the target they were now talking about again, "Yeah, we're here to get Ocelot."

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><p><strong>And that's chapter people. This is the start of a short-spanning mission arc meant to get some things in motion for later, and I hope it's enjoyable for the populace that may or may not take the time to read it.<strong>

**Now for those of you that are concerned with Naruto's powers, he will never be a jutsu-spamming wreck as you can tell by this point, but he will find a way to increase the amounts of things he can do. I won't tell you how since it probably isn't obvious and I want to keep it under wraps for now, but in the course of a few years he'll have what he needs to improve on his techniques.**

**Regardless, thanks for reading. Any questions that I feel I can answer I will attempt to do my best to unless it compromises future plot. Until next time everyone.**

**Kenchi out.**


	14. TransAtlantic Espionage

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. With the help of instructions from the internet I am attempting to fashion my car into an armored combat vehicle. It's not going so well… I absolutely suck at welding.

**Chapter 14: Trans-Atlantic Espionage**

* * *

><p>Just as she said she would, Olga arrived with the intel that she believed was necessary for Naruto to make a move against Ocelot the very next night. Bringing it directly to Naruto himself, she sat back in his hotel room as he went over everything she gave him intently, "This is everything I was able to find Uzumaki." She stated firmly as he continued to read, "He was hard to find, but he's supposed to be leaving tonight. That's something they just couldn't hide for someone that knows what to look for. You've got a very small window."<p>

Naruto's face was one of focus as he committed the info to memory, especially the riverside factory where things seemed to triangulate around, possibly defense for whatever was meant to be there, Ocelot's way out of Lyon, "No Olga, this is great. At least you found him in the first place for me. It might not be a big chance, but it's better than not having a single shot at all."

Apparently Ocelot had been looking for a doctor… and he'd been searching around hard for one that was discreet and damn good at what they did. Why the fuck did he need a doctor? Naruto didn't hurt him that badly at Shadow Moses. And then there was the matter of the man's technical title.

"What the hell is a 'Next-Generation Physical Technician'?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow once he read over the name of the doctor that Ocelot had probably used for whatever he had come to France for, "Doctor Stinjnin Markov…"

Olga shook her head at Naruto and began to explain, "Next-Generation Physical Technicians are the best surgeons in the entire world. Not only can they perform the normal surgeries that you and I deal with regularly, they are trained and research far beyond the scope of ways to operate on the human body."

Naruto frowned at how she explained that to him, as if he was supposed to know. All he knew about doctors was that they put him back together when he was too broken and busted up to get back up and walk it off… and that he didn't like them… the reason being, because they always acted like he didn't know how his own body worked and what he was capable of, "Oh yeah? Like how?"

"Cybernetic enhancements… fully functional artificial limb replacement… and even more. They even dabble in nanotechnology despite not specializing." Olga listed as she explained what these particular doctors were capable of, "They design and attach them to patients. It's an incredibly rare and increasingly sought after trade, incredibly difficult to do."

Naruto looked at the file for Dr. Stinjnin Markov. A picture from 2000 showed that he was a very tall and skinny with grey hair, wrinkles, sharp piercing eyes, and a grey beard. He was well over fifty-seven years of age from eastern Poland, and had never graduated from a formal medical university, instead cutting his teeth on the battlefield during the Warsaw Pact backed nations undergoing revolutions all over Asia and Africa, giving him an absurd amount of practice, this was not even considering what he had gotten practice doing during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan… possibly where he first met Ocelot. It was something to consider.

Once the Soviet Union collapsed, he fully ventured into his current chosen field. Due to his lack of actual legitimate medical background or education he never received respect, even for all of the skill he wound up developing. He had apparently made a major innovation in the last two or three years that received little to no mainstream attention and went unnoticed.

Due to his military background he also ran an elite group of soldiers for hire, not nearly the size of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, but sizeable enough to double as a personal security force known as Olympus.

"This is going to suck…" Naruto said to himself as he rubbed his temple and set the file aside, opting to take some time to make some small talk. He could take everything to the others and they could come up with a way to operate and go about grabbing Ocelot, the sooner the better, "So, thanks for bringing the sword." He said to Olga gratefully, getting a stiff nod in return, "It's pretty cool right? Did you get to play with it any when I left it with you?" He joked, trying to get a fun conversation going.

Olga's jaw dropped at the sheer audacity of that question, the mere thought of it made her angry. She took everything about her lifestyle deadly serious. She had to test the statement in her mouth to comprehend what Naruto had said, "Play with a… sword…" Her eyes narrowed at Naruto and she spoke rather heatedly to him, "Who plays with a deadly weapon Uzumaki? What do you take me as? I swear, you are the absolute worst, most unprofessional soldier that I have ever had the discourtesy of hearing of!"

"But you _have_ heard of me, even before we met." Naruto replied dryly without getting up from the bed. He did not like when people thought that he sucked, it made him quite snippy, "And I didn't have to be 'professional' to kick your ass and an entire squad of your men the first time, so if I'm so bad and I suck as a soldier what does that make you?" He then blocked a punch directed at his face and growled, "Don't do that." He warned before her other hand managed to make contact and hit him in the face.

"Or you'll what?" Olga retorted in an acerbic fashion, getting a kick to her stomach that sent her flying across the hotel room right down the small hall leading to the door and the bathroom. She sat up holding her stomach and glaring at Naruto hatefully, "You're going to pay for that…" She hissed out as she stood back up and got into a fighting stance.

"You started it." Naruto replied, red mark under his eye healing as he turned the television and clock radio near his bed on, able to see where this was going. He really hoped she wasn't armed. And why was the station the clock radio was on happen to be a rock station in a hotel room? The Hellacopters' 'Gotta Get Some Action Now' was playing. This was certainly not going to calm the situation down a bit, "Olga no." He said in a voice of warning, "Seriously."

This of course backfired. Being told not to try and beat his ass would just make her want to try it more, especially since he was the one that had last licks, "You'd better defend yourself Uzumaki." She said before quickly moving across the room towards Naruto who jumped to his feet just as she shot out a jab.

She cursed the fact that he was still so much faster than her with him barely even trying, because the moment he simultaneously grabbed her arm and evaded behind her he placed her in a hammerlock with her arm behind her back. However other than making her uncomfortable and trying to subdue her lightly with it, all he was doing was just holding her there. Not fighting her right was going to get him beaten if that was how he was going to handle things and she had anything to say about it. As quick as a whip, Olga spun to her free side and delivered a back elbow to Naruto's face before moving towards the wall and running up it to roll backwards over the top of him, pushing him face-first into the wall and getting her free.

As he turned around, his back hit the wall, and Naruto was never so happy to know that his own people were in both rooms on both sides of him. At least they wouldn't call the front desk over the ruckus. But if he didn't quiet this down he would have some explaining to do later.

Olga came back in to attack, but Naruto quickly grabbed her by her shoulders and spun her to the wall. She kneed his inside leg and broke his grip on her shoulders to grab the collar of his shirt and deliver three knee strikes to his stomach before leaning back against the wall and kick-shoving him away from her, knocking them both to the floor.

Both of them stood back up and Olga sent out a straight right hand that Naruto ducked under before hitting her with a series of three palm strikes to her torso so he didn't leave anymore long-lasting marks on her by accident like the scar on her face. He started at her stomach and aimed higher up to keep from being repetitive, however his last one aimed a little too high for Olga's modesty as he more or less struck and groped her breast, both of them going wide-eyed once they both realized what had just happened.

Naruto started backing off, "Olga that was an accident… and you're not even listening right now are you?" He finished with no hope of getting this to end easily.

Olga was visibly seething at what he had just done and forewent all technique to just tackle Naruto onto the floor in the narrow, small hallway where the closet and the door to the bathroom lay. She had a hold of his legs when she got him down and tried to spin for a kneebar, but the hall was too narrow for her to get the space to finish the submission hold cleanly, 'Fuck, of course she would know Sambo!' And she was very good at it.

She lacked the size to use it effectively against much larger or stronger opponents in a dominant and imposing manner the way it was meant to be used, but she made up for that with pure technique, because the speed at which she attempted the kneebar was impeccable. She was also flexible enough to almost make it work since Naruto could feel everything important in his right leg begin to take the stretching damage right at the knee. If only she was in the open room his leg would have been done.

They weren't however, and her head was close enough however for Naruto to grab her around the neck with his right hand loosely, allowing him to choke her until she shook herself loose and bit down on his hand. Naruto bit back a yelp and used his free leg to vengefully kick her in the face and allow himself to stand up again, "Alright! Enough domestic abuse!" Naruto ordered loudly only to see her reaching down into her knee-high black boots, probably for a weapon, 'Oh fuck that shit!'

Olga's hand rested on the ballistic knife she kept in her boot only to look up and see Naruto run across the room at her. Before she could pull the weapon out, Naruto delivered a dropkick to her chest that sent her flying back over the bed, hitting the back of her head on the far wall.

Both of them groaned in discomfort as they stood up, Olga holding the back of her head and Naruto holding the back of his, having hit his head on the ground after dropkicking Olga. Both of them locked eyes again and Olga immediately jumped up on the bed to attempt a spinning front kick from her elevated position. Naruto ducked it and swiped out her legs from under her to knock her on the bed before moving in to attempt to restrain her.

His posture when he did so left him vulnerable though, and Olga was able to slip a foot between his legs, raising it harshly for a kick to his testicles. She smirked until she looked up to see the pain on his face and saw that he too happened to be smirking, "Nothing?" She asked incredulously, getting a shake of the head from Naruto.

"Liquid Snake kicked me in my junk as hard as he fucking could at Shadow Moses and since then I keep them protected." Liquid blasted him so hard in his reproductive parts that Naruto thought he had been missing one for about two days afterward, "Never again." He said with conviction.

Olga, undeterred, shifted to her side and attempted a kick to Naruto's head that he blocked, "You aren't a very good hand-to-hand fighter when you don't have space to be annoying are you Uzumaki?" Olga asked as she kept trying to deliver kicks to his head. Naruto's fighting was raw and untrained, but it was clear that there was a method to his madness and he was fully aware of what he was doing.

Sick of blocking, Naruto grabbed her leg and flipped her over onto her belly. Despite not being a very good grappler, he knew a vulnerable state when he knew one and jumped at it, literally. He pinned Olga to the bed face-first, holding her arms out by her wrists so that she couldn't utilize them. She struggled for a minute or two, but Naruto wouldn't budge and eventually she stopped squirming.

They just lay there, Naruto still holding onto her for his own security since the last time he tried to call a truce in a fight with Olga she shot a bullet at him from a knife. Who knew what else she had up her sleeve this time? He damn sure didn't know that she could use Sambo the way she did.

Both of them were panting from the little impromptu scuffle, but neither of them were particularly worse for wear. Olga eventually turned her cheek to the side to look at him from one side of her face, "Why didn't you use those clones of yours?" She asked him with a grunt.

Naruto still held her in place, not letting the small talk lower his defenses, "Because what would be the fun in that?"

Olga let out a scoff at his answer, "Fucking bastard." He technically just beat her again.

Naruto bared his canines at her in something of a sneer, "Fucking bitch." He then reached into the high-knee boot that he saw her reach for earlier and pulled out her ballistic knife, "Do you have anything else?" He asked as he threw the knife aside, getting no answer from her, "I'm flattered that you dressed up like this for me, it'll make you easier to search more thoroughly."

"I really fucking hate you." She stated before answering his question abruptly lest he actually go through with his previous threat, "No, I don't have another weapon on me Uzumaki. Now get off of me!" This was embarrassing! She was a grown woman and one of the most dangerous people in the world and she had some blonde idiot lying down on top of her holding her in place.

Naruto stared her down for a moment before springing back off of the bed and turning the clock radio off as well as the TV. As he looked at her sit up on the bed and try to smooth her clothes back up her eyes panned up to him and they just stared at each other for a second before Naruto couldn't keep the grin off of his face any longer, "We both have problems… because that was way more fun than it should have been."

"True…" Olga said as a ghost of a smile appeared on her own face. As spontaneous and potentially violent as that was, it was more or less one big game to the both of them, a game with possibly high and deadly consequences but it came with the territory, 'Would I have stabbed or shot him with my knife if I had pulled it though?' She thought to herself before mentally shaking her head. If she had pulled that knife he would have stopped right there and she would have 'won'… ending their scuffle. Damn him for being so fast, she couldn't get it out of her boot, "We'll have to do it again one day." She _would_ beat him one day, there was no way that she would allow him to have not just one but two wins over her when she knew she could defeat him, "I'll destroy you next time."

Naruto started checking over the room for any damage that would be perceived as suspicious, pleasantly surprising him to find none, "Bring it on anytime princess." He said in response, "If you can find me you can fight me."

Softly clearing her throat, Olga then stood up and picked up her knife from the floor to stash it back in her boot, "Well I think I should be leaving. I need to head out to South Africa as soon as possible to join my men." She got a nod from Naruto who was still checking the room over for damages, "Did you check the bathroom?"

"Why?" Naruto asked as he looked over at the area past the bed where Olga hit her head on the wall. As he kept searching for any signs of their little fight, Olga grabbed him by his arm and dragged him into the bathroom, much to his confusion until she revealed that she had taped his pair of SOCOM pistols under the sink, "My guns?"

Olga threw the handguns over to him and also pulled out around fifteen magazines of ammunition for the guns, "Were you really going to go in with just the High-Frequency Blade?" She asked him, shaking her head.

Naruto shrugged as he stared at the guns in his hands, "I could have. I _am_ trained in procure on-site procedures." He was trained, but he hated working like that, "Seriously, thanks though. I could have worked things out, but I hate going in naked." While Miller taught him how to take what he needed in the field, he was trained in Konoha to always bring what he needed.

"I would have brought your MP5K too, but smuggling that weapon was far more trouble than the pistols and the sword. Even getting your little personal transport into this country was easier than bringing your submachine gun." Olga said almost apologetically until she found herself pulled into a hug, "What the hell are you doing?" She asked edgily.

Naruto blinked and pulled away from her to see the displeased look on her face, "Thanking you?" He said in a confused manner, "What did I do wrong?"

'I know he is not as clueless as he seems right now.' Olga thought to herself. From her talks with her fellow female assassin Sniper Wolf, he wasn't a stranger to a male-female relationship, even one as messed up as the one he had with the sniper. Naruto knew what was appropriate, it was just that his own personal standards went a little bit further in either direction than other cultural norms. He was an expressive person. If he didn't like you he would say so and depending in the level of dislike and with a good reason to do so he would possibly do something about it. If he liked you he would do things like this, hug you, as long as he knew you wouldn't try to kill him for it, "*sigh* Nothing Uzumaki. Just remember what I told you I wanted for this mission, okay?"

"Got it." Naruto said as he began to show Olga out of his room out into the hall, "I guess I'll call you when this is over and let you know how it went. Remember, if you need my help-."

"-You still owe me a favor." She tried to finish for him with a smirk, gleeful at holding something over his head, only for him to shake his head, "What? You're saying you don't owe me a favor?"

Naruto gave her a small smile, "No, not that. If you need my help I was going to say don't hesitate to call me or one of the others that can reach me. I'll be down to where you need me in a heartbeat Olga… because we are friends." He then closed the door before stopping as it was cracked slightly, "And we love each other very much even if you are all tsundere right now." He finished quickly, shutting and locking the door before any retaliation could be dealt.

Olga had her leg raised off of the ground to kick the damn door clean off of the hinges, but she was not about to pay for that crap. Thus she let him escape with that for now, "I hate that bastard…" She muttered to herself as she walked down the hall to the elevator in order to leave, "I don't even know what that last thing he said means…"

It would be several days later when Olga was finally informed as to the meaning and connotation of the word 'tsundere'. Unfortunately for the men in her father's employ it was during physical training. And an angry Olga didn't serve to disprove Naruto's remark as in an effort to suppress her resentment she initiated sparring between the soldiers and proceeded to pick out and beat up all of the blonde young men due to the lack of the actual perpetrator's physical presence.

XxX

(Mission Briefing)

Sniper Wolf: "So just what were you doing in your room with Olga an hour ago little probie? It was awfully loud, but Meryl and I could hear grunting and a lot of bumping around. She looked awfully disheveled when she left as well. Anything you'd like to share?"

Naruto Uzumaki: "Just a little bonding time."

Meryl Silverburgh: "…Unbelievable…"

Johnny Sasaki: "You go Boss."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Shut up. *clears throat* Alright you guys. We don't have a lot of time for this to work out so we've got to move tonight before dawn. Olga narrowed down his position to be on the shore of the Saône River tonight for sure, right in an industial complex where the river joins with the Rhône. We can't fuck up and get busted because I really don't feel like running from Interpol."

Sniper Wolf: "Don't worry about being busted little probie. Ocelot and this Dr. Markov wish for their interaction to be quiet, thus the only way there will be any sort of alert sent to Interpol is if we are too loud to ignore _and _we're left behind and lose him. If the latter happens then Ocelot will definitely call it in and try to get us caught."

Meryl Silverburgh: "Dick…"

Sniper Wolf: "Yes, that would basically be the crudest terms to describe his personality."

Johnny Sasaki: "And it's just them? There's no one else there with them? That doesn't seem very smart Boss, even if Ocelot doesn't think that anyone knows where he is."

Naruto Uzumaki: "You're right. That's why Dr. Markov is supposed to have his own security detail; Olympus. I don't know a single thing about these guys, but if Ocelot feels safe doing deals with them watching over it I would say that they clearly don't suck.

Sniper Wolf: "*laughs* Not every soldier in the world worth knowing about can be famous like you or I little probie. Just because _we've_ never heard of them doesn't mean no one has, we just don't have the time to scout them correctly."

Meryl Silverburgh, "That's really bad right? We don't know what these guys can do or what kind of firepower we're up against."

Naruto Uzumaki: "That's right. And that's why this is more or less a solo sneaking mission for me. You all have jobs, but I'm the one that's going to be going in directly to deal with Revolver Ocelot and whatever nastier tricks Olympus might or might not have for us. I'm better at that then the rest of you, and now isn't the time to teach you two (Johnny and Meryl) how to do this on the fly… I'm a shitty teacher anyway."

Sniper Wolf: "A baby teaching babies… a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one. I should say that this would be the best course of action little probie."

Naruto Uzumaki: "I'm not a baby in a fight Wolf… and could you please call me something else, like my actual name? What's wrong with just being Naruto?"

Johnny Sasaki: "Wait, that's really your name? I thought your name was totally fake, or a code for something Boss. You know, like everybody in FOXHOUND had. There's nothing wrong with your name by the way. You sound like a protagonist in a super-cool manga or something."

Meryl Silverburgh: "And that right there should tell you everything that's wrong with your name Naruto. Like I said before, it's weird."

Sniper Wolf: "I just so happen to like calling you 'little probie' more than I like your name. Maybe if something better comes up over time I'll call you that instead… but I doubt I will regardless."

Naruto Uzumaki: "*sigh* Now I know how Kitty felt about me calling her that. Anyway… getting back on topic, Johnny, when I grab Ocelot we're going to need some fast way out of Lyon. I'm leaving that up to you to grab for us. We're going to need to move fast, especially if I can't snag him quietly because Olympus and who knows what else will be all over my ass the second they realize I took him."

Johnny Sasaki: "You've got it Boss. Anything in particular you want?"

Naruto Uzumaki: "Just as long as you can drive it, I couldn't care any less even if I was actually getting paid to do this. If anything I want it to be fast and able to hold all four of us and our special guest Ocelot. You need to get it fast too because we're going to need to be ready to roll in a hurry."

Johnny Sasaki, "Count on me Boss, I'm your man."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Meryl, you're with Johnny."

Meryl Silverburgh: "What? No. Why? Johnny's going to get me shot."

Naruto Uzumaki: "…Because what if someone walks up behind Johnny while he's stealing a vehicle and splatters his brains all over the dashboard? I like you guys, and will keep things that way until you do something completely retarded to betray me or any of us. I really want to keep you all alive, and you two are still noobs. Shadow Moses was the first action either of you saw."

Sniper Wolf: "Just a pair of babyfaced noobs-."

Naruto Uzumaki: "-Barely able to lace up each other's boots-."

Sniper Wolf: "-Or know when the safety to your assault rifle is on-."

Meryl/Johnny: "That was a one time thing!"

Naruto Uzumaki: "-And the two of you combined make one very competent soldier since both of you kind of suck at what the other one is good at. Meryl you can fight, stand your ground, hide really well, and you're really brave, but you can't steal a car unless you have the keys to it and you can't get your way through security systems. Johnny can break through the door with the highest security clearance at Shadow Moses and can hotwire military vehicles… and drive anything… but I've never seen him fire even a single bullet."

Johnny Sasaki: "…You knocked me out both times before I could even do anything Boss…"

Meryl Silverburgh: "…I see your point Naruto."

Sniper Wolf: "Play nice kids."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Wolf."

Sniper Wolf: "Yes love?"

Naruto Uzumaki: Tell me that Lyon has tons of hills."

Sniper Wolf: "Indeed it does. And next you probably want me to tell you if I know the best view of the entire riverside. The answer to that is of course I do. We've been here for days before you got here. I had time to see all of this beautiful city… it's a shame we don't have time to enjoy it together."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Then that's where I would like you to be. You're my eye in the sky. If you see anything worth mentioning from your vantage point then I want you to tell all of us. We're going to be in constant communication with each other until the mission is complete. And maybe if I don't get riddled full of bullets we can go somewhere fun after I interrogate Ocelot."

Sniper Wolf: "You're so romantic little probie."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Grr… Okay, I'll admit I walked right into that one. Alright everyone, are we all ready to get this over with? This is going to be a walk in the freaking park. Remember this though; rule number 111: No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy so be ready for anything."

Meryl Silverburgh: "I'm reminded more of rule number 99 in this case, especially with you leading this Naruto: The more stupid the leader is, the more important missions he is ordered to carry out."

Naruto Uzumaki: "You know the rules too? Well then be thankful that Johnny isn't leading this thing or we'd be on a suicide mission to find and take out the entire upper echelon of command of the Taliban. Now let's do this. No one get caught, because trying to bust one of us out of custody would be hell."

XxX

(Saône River Disturbance)

Primary Objectives:  
>-Capture Revolver Ocelot <span>alive<span>.  
>-Discover the location of Metal Gear REX test data and destroy it.<br>-Escape Lyon (and France)

Secondary Objective:  
>-Discover any information and come back with any possible evidence of treachery on the part of Revolver Ocelot towards the Gurlukovich Mercenaries if it exists.<p>

(April 2005 – Lyon, France – Naruto: Age 18)

It smelled like rain outside as Naruto stayed to the rooftops on his way to begin his mission at the industrial complex. The way he was dressed, if he was somehow caught he could just play it off as him practicing parkour, free running. Apparently it was big in France, but Naruto could do stuff that would make those people green with envy.

Naruto on this night was wearing tight black long sleeved shirt that ran down into fingerless glove attachments with his connected facemask that was currently pulled over the lower portion of his face. On his head he wore a black headband with his Konoha leaf insignia on the metal plate across the forehead. On his feet he was allowing his shinobi sandals to make a comeback as he wore a black pair of them. He had on a durable pair of black pants with his SOCOM pistols holstered on each thigh and his usual equipment strapped to his belt per usual. Running up and down the length of the outside of his legs he had throwing knives all ready for quickdraw. On his back was the sheathed HF Blade. His forearms held tough grieves meant to protect.

There was no body armor or vest to protect his torso. He was going more for speed tonight than for the instance of a long pitched battle the way he had been dressed at Shadow Moses. He put his hand to his ear as he continued to head towards the more darkened area nearing the riverside, "This is Naruto, about to enter the area to begin the mission. Give me some good news so we can get this started right. Where are you guys?"

Sniper Wolf's voice was the first to come up over the Codec, _"I'm almost in position little probie. You don't need me to tell you anything right this moment do you?"_

"No, I'm just making sure you're all okay." Naruto said as he continued his acrobatics all along the roofs in the dark. Low light and the clouds filling the sky and covering the moon were definitely his friends, "Johnny, Meryl? What about you two? One of you talk to me."

"_We're all good Boss."_ Johnny said quietly, _"We're not as fast as you though so we're not to the target area to begin our search yet."_

"That's alright." Naruto assured them, "As long as you have time to get us a vehicle and get us an escape route all set to get Wolf out once we're done it's good."

Meryl spoke up from her own active radio, _"We'll be done with it in no time. Just make sure you pop Ocelot in the mouth a few times for me okay?"_

As their voices cut out since they would only be communicating in burst transmission for the duration of the mission, Naruto went back to taking in the dead silence of the night. He hadn't even been able to count all of the small factories, storage buildings, and transport headquarters he had passed since entering the industrial district, and the closer he got to the river the darker things seemed to get. Streetlights were sparse and few were active, he was seeing no cars at all in the streets he passed by and around.

He made his way to the ground to begin traversing the darkened area once he saw a place where the lights were on and in full effect. An old truck depot by the river. Well if he was going to start looking for Ocelot he had to be somewhere around there, and that was the only place with lights so it was the first place to check out as far as he was concerned, 'First stop. Let's make this quick.'

He would have used his clones and spread them out, but spacing them out over a wide berth was only good in cases of scouting, ambushes, and spying. Not for infiltration. They also only had their pistols and their swords on them, no MP5K. He had to be smart about how he used them or he'd just wind up getting exposed or getting his clones shot due to a lack of firepower to make his proxy bodies good support players.

A squad of well-trained soldiers/clones would do no good in this kind of mission anyway.

Moving around an entire lot of stowed away trailers, Naruto abruptly ducked behind one of them once he saw a pair of armed guards. Apparently the uniforms of the Olympus group were grey pants and plain white shirts with the option for grey jackets over them. Also one of the men had on a black beret, causing Naruto to block a snicker, 'Europe, all I can say is damn… I would not be caught dead wearing a beret even if you held me at gunpoint. Berets are for pretty boys and gruff old high-ranking officers.'

"That guy the doctor is with freaks me out." One of the men said as he walked alongside his patrolling partner. They both carried Mini-Uzis with red dot sights for more precise aiming, so Naruto felt he would have needed to make damn sure he stayed away from those damn things, "Why does Dr. Markov have to act like a real doctor and keep him here for observation? I would have bounced his American Cowboy-looking ass out of here the second the surgery was finished."

'What fucking surgery?' Naruto wondered to himself before touching his hand to his ear for the Codec, "Ocelot's here for some kind of surgery. What is it, 'I'm-so-fucking-old-I'll-bust-a-hip-if-I-have-to-fight-someone-as-awesome-as-Naruto-again' surgery?" He asked quietly

"_That's not as funny as you thought it was in your head little probie."_ Wolf commented over the open line between them, _"And Ocelot did take some substantial damage during Shadow Moses. The Cyborg Ninja, Gray Fox, cut his right hand off."_

Naruto's eyes widened when he heard that, and then he remembered his run-in with Ocelot and noted that Ocelot didn't use his right arm once in that battle, "Ha!" He just couldn't help himself. That was hellaciously amusing to him to say the very least. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

"What was that?"

"Fuck." Naruto cursed before silently clamoring his way up the side of a trailer in time for the two guards to look where he had just been on the ground. Naruto peered over the side of the trailer he was lying down on top of and slowly stood up before jumping off and landing on both of them with a pair of stomps that knocked them unconscious.

Nodding to himself about an early crisis averted, Naruto went to move out from the trailer to continue along his way when he saw a figure sitting on top of the truck depot building. Naruto grit his teeth and ducked back behind the trailer just in time to dodge a single shot from a sniper rifle that let off a resounding series of rapid blasts, "What?"

"I can see your legs under the trailer too!" A male voice said in a British accent. Naruto peeked his head over the trailer for a moment before having to duck back down again lest his skull be pierced by a bullet, "You aren't going anywhere friend. You've got the sniping expert of Olympus facing you down. Charon is the name sunshine." The man wore glasses and had red slicked back hair with freckles on his face. He wore the usual grey attire of Olympus with his grey jacket zipped up and his collar turned up.

He was using a semi-automatic sniper rifle and was firing rapidly with it once he got a target in sight. Compared to Sniper Wolf this guy was amateur hour. Okay, if he was trying to watch for Naruto's legs so closely then a flashbang would take care of that bastard, or maybe a smoke grenade would let Naruto get close enough to put that pretender down. Just because he could see the entire lot from his spot didn't mean the guy was safe from him.

Before Naruto could begin to fight Charon, a shot that sounded far more distant rang out and a sharp cry came from the red-haired man. Naruto looked and saw his face twisted in pain before he slowly slumped forward and fell off of the roof to the ground below.

Naruto quickly ran over to Charon's face down dead body and saw the blood pooling around his body from the bullet wound in the back of his head.

"_Serves that rank amateur right."_ Wolf's voice said in a distasteful manner, _"Wasting shots like that… not even bothering to give his prey the courtesy of hiding for them. That man was no sniper. He used an ACOG Scope, trying to make his weapon something that it wasn't."_

Naruto let out a chuckle. Wolf got fairly riled up about the sniping abilities of others. She was very traditional and strict to the way she was taught to shoot, and stalking her enemies stealthily was a must. Charon was loud and obnoxious, the antithesis of Wolf, "He really must have pissed you off." Naruto commented as he jumped up to the top of the truck depot building and looked across the river at a rather prominent cathedral at the top of the hill across it.

XxX

(Across the Saône River - Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière)

Sitting up in the highest point of the belltower of this church, Sniper Wolf looked through the scope of her PSG-1 with a smile on her lips as she saw Naruto waving at her all the way from the operation zone. In her ear was the receiver of her own radio communication device as the receiver sat by her mouth, "Yes I can see you perfectly. I've got my eye on you little probie. If I see anything I will inform you, or take out the trouble myself. Good luck."

XxX

(With Naruto)

"Thank you Wolf." Naruto said before looking down at the corpse of Charon and around the entire site, seeing no other sentries in the area, "This is just the perimeter. Ocelot isn't here. He's further down the riverside."

"_Then you'd better get moving."_ Wolf said pleasantly, _"The corner where the two rivers meet seems rather busy. Tell me when you get there. I can't just start shooting from here for no reason. It's up to you for now."_

"Beautiful." Naruto said sarcastically before beginning to head towards the place where the two rivers met as per Wolf's directions from her vantage point.

XxX

(With Johnny and Meryl)

Johnny was fully decked out in normal Gurlukovich Mercenary gear; orange and brown camouflaged pants and jacket, black gloves, his black balaclava, a harness across his chest with his sidearm pistol attached, and an AKS-74u in his grasp, "Okay… I think that's our best ticket to get all of us out of here in one piece."

"Gee, do you think?" Meryl said sarcastically. She wore a heavy black ballistic vest, a pair of black sleeves that covered most of her arms, and a pair of black fingerless gloves as well as urban camouflage pants, kneepads, and a pair of grey boots. On each side of her hips she had a Desert Eagle. Instead of taking Naruto's advice during Shadow Moses about the guns she did her best to get better with them just to spite him and possibly rub it in his face once she did so.

From a building across the street, both of them were staring over the top of a brick wall that happened to be surrounding an old park that had fallen out of use with the drop in quality of the industrial district. A pair of binoculars for the both of them to get a closer look.

They had a clear view of a rundown field possibly meant for football (soccer) back when the park was regularly used. And on that field sat a U.S. Military helicopter. They weren't close enough for Johnny to try and identify which one, but he was certain he could steal it.

Of course then there was the issue of the soldiers skulking all through the park guarding the area. That was going to be a total drag to deal with. Even if they got to the helicopter and Johnny was able to get it started, then what would they do while it got warmed up?

At that moment, the overcast that had been in the sky all week long finally released its payload so to speak as it began to rain, something that Meryl just found gave them an advantage, "Fantastic." She said optimistically, "Okay Johnny, are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be." Johnny replied before they made their way to the fire escape they used to climb the building in the first place. As they got down and headed towards the ground, Johnny let out a sigh, not looking forward to trying his luck against over thirty-five Olympus mercenaries, "Oh man… I don't really do well in the rain." He groaned as he held his stomach and finished descending the fire escape.

His stomach let out a growl that caught Meryl's attention. Due to being paired with Johnny on patrol by Olga for their 'convenience' while in Russia she knew this noise very well since it seemed to happen all of the time. And now it was back again in the alley across the street from the park they were about to infiltrate, "Are you kidding me? I swear to God Johnny-boy… you had better be hungry because if you've got an upset stomach again I'm gonna-!"

"Yelling won't help!" Johnny said as he ran off further into the alley, grabbing a metal trash can for emergency use as his stomach continued to unleash hell on him, "It's a legitimate medical condition!"

Meryl shook her head as she could hear his uncomfortable groans in the dark of the alley, "…Gross. I really hope he has something to wipe with."

XxX

(With Naruto)

Rain was beginning to pour down as Naruto began to walk around the outskirts of a construction site. In the center of the site, was a three story structure that was just bare bones steel outline of whatever it was meant to be. Maybe an office building? He didn't know but he had to go through it. Luckily, either Wolf had already taken out the sentries that had already been here or there just wasn't anyone here, both would have been good for him.

As he moved through the construction site the place was full of set aside steel girders, plywood, stacks of bricks, mobile lights, power supplies, it had all of these things, but it looked like no one had been there in quite some time. At least it was dark. There wasn't even any moonlight, "Wolf. Do you have eyes on us?"

"_On Johnny and Meryl, yes. They are en route to an old park a few miles away from you. On you, no. I know where you are, I just can't see you."_ That was understandable. It was pitch-black and the rain wasn't exactly helping. Wolf didn't possess a thermal scope either. He really needed to make her upgrade her gear, that traditionalist habit she had was going to get troublesome the more time passed. Come to think of it, he needed an upgrade too.

"Keep eyes on Johnny and Meryl. If you can see them well enough try to help them along until I get out of here back to somewhere you can see." Naruto concluded before turning his Codec off and continuing along.

He really didn't like this place. It was one thing that it was dark, but it felt intentionally blacked out. He felt like it was too easy. The fact that the place was more or less tailor-made for someone with his abilities in stealth meant only one thing to him.

It wasn't meant for him to use.

It was meant for someone else.

And this someone else fought the best in the dark. Now normally this wouldn't have concerned Naruto, but he had already spoken aloud to Wolf over the Codec. That meant that this person knew where he was. There was always one default thing to do when his next move could equal death.

Naruto made four Kage Bunshin to surround him closely with their SOCOM pistols drawn and pointed out in the darkness, 'I definitely need new equipment…' Naruto thought to himself as the clone on his right was riddled with bullets and dispelled by a silenced weapon automatic weapon.

All of Naruto's clones began firing in that general direction while the original slipped away from his copies and hung back inside of a stack of girders, drawing his own SOCOM and waiting for some kind of signal from his clones as to what action to take by way of their mental connection.

It didn't take too long for Naruto himself to feel the consequences of another clone getting cut down by gunfire, 'He can see… He's probably got some kind of night-vision or thermal goggles. Come on I need a plan.' Naruto sent out a mental order to his two remaining clones and formed two more to join them, spreading them out over the area.

Bullets ricoched and silenced gunfire reigned over the quiet setting. Naruto paid rapt attention and stayed patient as he held a flashbang grenade tightly in his hands as he anticipated his clones' demise, making sure that the shock of pain he would take wouldn't force him to drop his grenade and alert his enemy with the clang of it.

In a matter of moments all four clones were shot down, but that was intended. It was meant for Naruto to help triangulate the position of whoever was stalking him, and from his clone death memories this person didn't move fast the way he would have been moving if he had an advantage like this. They crept along, probably because they lacked the skill to run silently.

After throwing his flashbang grenade and turning to cover his ears, Naruto heard the sharp crack of the weapon going off and heard his enemy let out a cry of pain before emptying his clip. His gun didn't hold many bullets in a magazine apparently. By this time however, Naruto had leapt up from his cover and started running towards the location of the yell from where he had thrown his flashbang, he could hear his blinded enemy fumbling with attempting to reload his gun. He wouldn't get the chance.

Naruto fired his SOCOM four times and heard a grunt of pain as at least one of his bullets hit home, 'Gotcha!' Naruto could feel the movement of his opponent and put up his SOCOM as he drew his HF Blade and in one swift movement drove the sword right through his target. Naruto kept running and driving forward until he ran himself and his enemy into a construction trailer at the edge of the site, pinning the man to the outside sheet metal wall.

As the sounds of the momentary physical ruckus came to an end, Naruto twisted the HF Blade inside of his enemy and as the blade hissed he heard him let out a ragged exhale. Feeling the blood staining his fingers as even the handle of the sword began to press into the wound, Naruto abruptly jerked the sword to the side, cutting out of whomever he had been fighting and hearing the sword cut through the cheap exterior sheet metal on the outside of the trailer.

The body impacted onto the ground with a resounding thud. Nobody got up from a wound like what Naruto was sure he had inflicted. Not even he was sure he would have been able to get up after nearly being bifurcated and this person damn sure wasn't him.

Even though he couldn't see it, Naruto was certain that his sword was covered in blood. It was the first time he had used it on a person. In Russia he had gotten acquainted with it and learned that somehow the temperature of the blade was increased by resonating at a high frequency, hence HF Blade. It cut through this stealth guy like he was made of butter, and Naruto was very glad that he couldn't see his own nose in front of his face at the moment because he didn't even want to see how he had just butchered that man. He had enough featured guests in his nightmares, he didn't need to add another one.

Naruto swung his sword about in an effort to get the blood off and sheathed it before moving along. His heart was still beating fast from the fight and he was actually sad, not sad that he had done what he had done to that man, he wasn't about to die in the dark for anyone, he was sad that the battle was so easy. If someone was going to try to duel him to the death like that he wanted someone that could possibly end his life, someone that had a good chance of doing it.

Olga Gurlukovich, Revolver Ocelot, Sniper Wolf, Liquid Snake, Gray Fox, Solid Snake… all of these people had one thing in common. They were the only ones over the last six years to truly make him feel the threat of death. Not since he had been in his original world had he felt the threat of death more than these people had made him feel.

Not the fear of death, because as far as Naruto was concerned death wasn't scary, he had already died once before. And it wasn't that he wanted to die because he most certainly did not, but he loved the thrill of the possibility. A good fight was something of a high to him. He wasn't enjoying his job if he didn't believe he'd possibly die or suffer severe consequences from doing it.

No half-assed, pansy 'extreme sports' would ever possibly replicate this feeling. No full-contact exhibition fighting would ever let him feel the true rush of dueling hand-to-hand against someone that would crush his windpipe if he wasn't good enough to defeat them. No skydiving or base jumping would ever make his pulse quicken the way a shootout against a skilled foe or against overwhelming odds would. Only when he was staring death in the face with a smirk on his face did he ever feel like he mattered.

And this mission had just begun. The best part was that no one even knew he was there yet. He loved playing the party crasher.

* * *

><p><span>Omake: The Beginning of a Violent Friendship<span>

(Two Months Prior – February 2005 – Russian Far East, Kamchatka Peninsula)

The small Russian town that Naruto had managed to get himself, Sniper Wolf, Johnny, and Meryl into by getting passage aboard a merchant ship also provided Naruto with a doctor that 'fixed' his previously injured arm. Naruto was sitting on the snowy roof of the same doctor wearing a gently used brown coat as he waited.

Snow flurries fell from the sky over the quiet town while the sound of snow crunching under someone's feet drew closer to him. It was too late for any random townsfolk to be out and about and there was no chance in hell that any possible enemy knew they were there, so there was no reason to react suspiciously as the sounds of the footsteps stopped directly under the elevated position he was sitting at.

"I didn't think I would be seeing you again so soon Uzumaki." Olga said, standing below Naruto as she looked up to where he was sitting on the roof. She was wearing the same winter gear she had been wearing when he and Ocelot came to the Gurlukovich Mercenaries main base in December, "And yet here you are using my own personal frequency and telling me to get here and to come alone. Did you really want me to defeat you so soon after we just met again?"

"Are you alone?" Naruto asked without looking down. He was staring up at the moon at the moment, not bothering to look down.

Olga nodded but then scoffed as she realized that he wasn't even looking at her, "Yes. I am by myself. I did have to take a squad of my father's men with me to come here. He never lets me leave alone." That got Naruto to look down at her abruptly, "I left them a few miles outside of town and came the rest of the way myself. Why?"

Naruto hopped down from his spot on the roof and Olga was about to reach for her gun until she realized that he wasn't doing anything, "What do you know about what happened on Shadow Moses Island?" He noticed her eyes flicker to the left slightly and narrowed his own, "So you knew what was going to happen?"

"Not until after you left." Olga replied immediately, "You were meant to be killed. This I knew even though the details weren't given to me. I knew it and it made me sick." She said with an angry growl in her voice, "But it was either let a loose acquaintance be at risk or tell you what was to happen and betray my father's ambitions and trust. What would you have done?" She then looked away from him and crossed her arms, "It looks as though you managed to survive well enough anyway, but what are you doing here?"

Yeah, he survived, but Puppetmaster Liquid made sure someone close to him didn't. Maybe if he knew about what was going to happen he could have stopped it sooner? Master Miller wouldn't have had to die.

Naruto let out a bitter laugh at his 'fortune', "I'm not going back to the goddamned army that's for sure. You know that story about me getting kidnapped after our fight that I told you the last time I was in Russia? FOXHOUND was behind that… and it goes high up the chain of command. I'm not going to work for people and be a pawn to someone who I'll never see and whose name I'll never hear Olga. I don't have any allegiance to America or any country at all."

Olga took on a look of irritation, "And you think that you can just join me and my father's unit don't you? He knows that you and Solid Snake were integral to the downfall of the Sons of Big Boss, and he knows that you and he are the reason that his superweapon he was meant to receive the data to is lost." She let out a sigh, "If you were to come back with me and attempt to join… he would probably put a bullet in your head the very first chance he got."

And that was a shame. She may not have liked Naruto very much, but he was far more than competent. Working with him would probably have been a boon for the Gurlukovich Mercenaries.

Naruto figured as much though. Someone all buddy-buddy with Ocelot wouldn't take kindly to him fucking up Ocelot's plans, "That's okay. Thanks anyway."

Olga looked taken aback by his thanks, "And what makes you think I meant I would have taken you back if I could? I just meant to say that if by some miracle I figured I could put up with you every single day and decided to take you with me you would be killed as soon as we got there. And no one will be killing you except for me, understood?"

Naruto nodded before mumbling under his breath, "Tsundere…"

"What?"

"Nothing…" Naruto said, acting as if he was having a coughing fit, "Sorry, I might be getting a cold." A damnable lie to cover his own ass. He didn't get sick. Ever. But he then got back on track, "Would you accept Sniper Wolf if she were to head to your base?"

"I thought she was dead." Olga said, sounding legitimately surprised.

Naruto shook his head and pointed into the house they were standing in front of, "No, she's in there. Her and two survivors from Shadow Moses. So could they join up if they made it to your base?"

"Any begrudging issues like yours notwithstanding I don't see why not." Olga said after thinking for a second. Having Sniper Wolf work with her, and all she would have to do would be to take two others with her? She was getting over with this deal and Naruto was sounding as if she would be doing him a huge favor. She could even make sure that the other two were protected if need be by having them serve with her directly, "So all you want is for me to take these people with me. Why should I?" Maybe she could get something else out of this?

Naruto glared at her before slowly getting down on his knees and lowering his head, "Please take them in and make sure they stay alive Olga." He reached into his pocket and dropped a kunai at her feet as he lifted his head up, "You can cut me the way I cut you if you want my blood as payment or something. I don't care. You'll have to cut really deep if you want it to leave even a faint scar like yours though."

That was legitimately surprising.

Olga picked the kunai up and walked closer to Naruto, grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling his head back to get a closer look at his face. She could scar him the way he scarred her. But as she looked into his eyes she saw that he legitimately didn't care. She probably could have sliced him all night long to her heart's content if she were actually sadistic enough to maim someone, and he still probably wouldn't have cared a bit.

Actually, it was kind of insulting. Did he think she was a barbarian and would get off on such petty revenge? She didn't want to beat his ass because he scarred her face. She wanted to beat his ass because he beat hers first. Olga dragged him by his hair to his feet, "Get up Uzumaki. I don't want to cut you. If I scar you I'm going to do it fair and square in a true battle like you did against me." She held out the kunai he had presented to do the deed for him to take back, "Your scar will be a reminder of your defeat and my dominance over you, just like my own is now."

"Keep it." Naruto insisted with a genuine smile on his face, "Maybe you'll actually end up getting me with it in the future."

Olga put the weapon up as he requested. Hey, it was free, "Why do you sound so happy? I said I'm not going to stop until I prove I'm better than you. I'm not going to stop at anything to defeat you." If anything his smile only grew.

"Just because you want to fight me isn't a reason to hate you." Naruto explained, "If you really want me to say it I will." From the look on Olga's face she wanted him to explain things further, "Fine. If you want me to be honest; the idea of fighting you, right here, right now… it's exciting as hell."

"What?" Olga asked, seriously shocked by that response.

Naruto started pacing around, "The first time we fought we basically drew." Olga was about to interject that he was the one that won as his goal was accomplished, he had broken the back of her ambush on the U.S. troops and had rendered her unable to continue, but he wasn't done talking yet, "It's been almost two years since then. You're probably so much better now after than then you were then. Who knows what you can do now? And the same goes for me! I mean, I've got a sword. The next time we actually fight I'll probably know how to use it! Tell me that you aren't excited about another fight!"

Olga stood in silent shock before answering, "Not as much as you, clearly. Normal people don't exactly like the prospect of fighting the way that we're going to fight Uzumaki." It wasn't exactly going to be a friendly encounter. She was serious. She was going to be coming for his blood the next time, just like the first fight.

Naruto let out a sheepish laugh, "I'm not exactly normal Olga, even to other soldiers. Fighting is all I know how to do… and you were raised by your dad learning how to fight too right? You don't feel the same way?"

At that, a smile appeared on her face, "Okay, yes. The thought of another fight with you, with both of us at 100 percent…" She stressed as she looked at the bandaged hand of Naruto's injured arm, "…Is stirring." She then shook her head, "But I think you'd be happy fighting anyone that would be skilled. I remember during our first fight… you smiled way too much to be considered sane, even when you had the most grievous injuries. Even in a horrible fight to the death when you had lost more blood than a little bit, when you had taken sickening damage, you were still enjoying yourself. And do you remember what you said when I retreated and told you that you had won for today?"

Naruto nodded, "I said, 'Come back and try me anytime beautiful.'" He sighed as he could see the point she was trying to make, "So I like to fight… I like to fight so much that it actually scares people. So what? It's not like I can do anything to change it, and it's not like denying it would do anything. There isn't anything about me that's normal Olga. Right from the very beginning, nothing's ever been normal." He said as he jumped back up on the roof and sat in his former spot.

Olga just stared up at him before speaking again, "Alright Uzumaki. I'll bring Sniper Wolf and the two other soldiers you mentioned with me when I return. But for now I want you to tell me about Shadow Moses." A frown marred her features, "I have a feeling that I will never be told everything by my father, and that Shalashaska left quite a few things out of what he told him in the first place."

Not really thinking, Naruto patted the space on the roof next to him as he went back to staring at the moon. Much to his surprise he felt Olga's presence right next to him after a few seconds. He quickly turned to face her as she looked to be expectantly waiting on his explanation, "How did you get up here so fast?" He asked, impressed since he hadn't expected her to get up there so easily or quickly.

Olga just smirked, "You think you're the only person in the world that can do your stupid acrobatics naturally? I've been training to kill you for two years remember? Duplicating a few of your circus tricks is a no-brainer for a first step towards doing that. Now tell me the story."

All of a sudden, a fight against Olga seemed to be that much more appealing, "Okay, first before we start I have to ask you a question." Naruto only hoped that a fight wasn't the only thing he could get out of this first arrangement with her. If they could talk like this then it was a step in the right direction, "How pissed off was your dad when he found out that the Hind D he gave Ocelot got blown up?"

Olga's face was one of surprise until she let out a slight laugh, "You blew it up?" She was far more amused than angry. She wasn't mad at all, Olga seemed to think it was funny, "You were the one that flew it away in the first place."

Naruto needed friends. Because his enemies were apparently everywhere. And they were behind the scenes of the most powerful army in the world. And if push came to shove there wouldn't be anywhere to run or hide if his desire for answers into this conspiracy pushed the wrong buttons. It was just him, and maybe three people that might help him.

"Nah, I wish. Snake blew it up." He wanted a good friend more than he wanted a good fight… because a friend was what he needed, since he already knew he would have one hell of a fight on his hands sooner or later, "I did blow up the entire tank hangar though… and wait until I tell you what I did to Ocelot because I can tell you don't like him." Olga shook her head, a distasteful look on her face, "Well you're going to love hearing this."

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter complete. This mission should take the next chapter to complete and then we'll move along to a part of the story I think people would find fun, and fans of Metal Gear might like.<strong>

**I've not got anything extra to say today. I hope you enjoyed. I'll catch you all next time. My ass has to work for a living.  
><strong>

**Kenchi out.**


	15. Enough For a Lifetime

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. In an attempt to learn to ricochet my bullets off of surfaces and hit targets like Revolver Ocelot I wound up being kicked out of the local gun range and banned indefinitely. I still remain in the opinion that the dude that I shot in the leg totally overreacted, the drama queen. I got shot in the leg and the side before when I was 10 years old and I didn't cry nearly as hard as that guy did.

It could have been worse though, I could have gone to prison.

Kenchi don't go to no prison. You know what they make you do in prison? Fuck. That.

**Chapter 15: Enough For a Lifetime**

* * *

><p>By some miraculous stroke of good fortune, Meryl and Johnny quickly got themselves in gear despite the stomach troubles of the latter plaguing them (Johnny) right from the start. Even if Johnny's stomach could turn at any given moment they were on the clock. Naruto wasn't going to wait around for them to get a ride out of there, he simply couldn't. Everything had to be ready to roll by the time that he extracted Ocelot or all of the effort would be for naught.<p>

As the rain continued to fall more assertively than before, the two ran through the park, staying off of paved paths due to the possibility of running into some kind of patrol. They wondered how close they could get to the field that contained the helicopter they had come for before the enemy was alerted to their presence, but hopefully they would find a way to get away once they got the helicopter since that was the real issue.

As they were about to run up to an elevated part of the park to reach their destination by way of a set of stairs, they both caught sight of a sentry walking right towards the edge of the wall right at the start of the stairs. Before they could be caught they pressed themselves against the wall that was luckily enough to hide their presence from the man on guard once he looked out from his small vantage point.

'Well this is just great.' Meryl thought to herself as she and Johnny stayed frozen to the wall lest a movement alert the man above them, 'How do guys like Snake do this stuff? Naruto probably would have just grabbed him and knocked him out by now but I can't reach that high and I don't have four times the vertical leap of an NBA shooting guard.' Her brain was working hard trying to think of a logical way out of this mess.

At the moment, Johnny's thoughts were different, 'Man I'm glad I bought that extra balaclava, it was a total lifesaver earlier… too bad I never even got to wear it.' He then panned his gaze over to the serious looking Meryl who seemed properly more concerned with the situation they were in, 'She is seriously well-built.' He thought as he looked her over, 'Why does Boss know so many good looking women. Meryl, Miss Gurlukovich, Wolf; for a guy that apparently doesn't know very many people a lot of his friends sure are hot… so what the hell's my excuse?'

As the two were occupied by their own thoughts to wait for a clear moment, the sound of a fly unzipping caught both of their ears before a sigh of relief a stream of urine came from above landing right in front of and between them thank goodness.

While Johnny was thanking God that they were lucky enough to not get peed on, Meryl was fuming and didn't even care about getting caught anymore as she just ran towards the end of the wall and up the stairs to run up behind the guy that had been standing guard. One punch to the back of the head of the man distracted by relieving himself sent him spilling over the wall and onto the ground below, face-first into his own self-made puddle.

"Ugh… what the hell-?" The guard managed to get out before getting smashed in the back of the head by Johnny's gun, knocking him out.

Looking up at Meryl standing up on the wall, Johnny saw her crack her knuckles with a perturbed look on her face, "Men are so gross…" She muttered before motioning for Johnny to head towards the steps to head on up and follow her on ahead towards the helicopter.

They eventually came to a small wooded area that outlined the field they were intending to head to, having slipped past the guards by completely thus far. Just before they could run into the trees to begin making their way any further, Meryl stopped and grabbed Johnny, jerking him back hard to keep him from running into the forest, "Gah! What did you stop me for?"

"This is too easy." Meryl said, staring intensely into the forest. They were so close she could see the field less than half a mile away from them, "Wouldn't there be guards posted in the woods too? That's a great place to keep sentries. And we're so close to the helicopter, there would have to be someone around." There had to be. If there wasn't anyone watching the damn helicopter then any punk kid with instructions ripped from the internet with time to kill could have run out there and stolen the damn thing.

"Uh, hold on." Johnny said as he fumbled with a pair of binoculars attached to his head on the outside of his balaclava. He eventually managed to put it down over his face an hit a button on them as he looked through the woods, "Uh oh."

Meryl didn't like the sound of that, "Uh oh? What 'uh oh'? What do you see?"

Johnny pointed into the woods, "I see explosives all over the place in there." He said as he pulled his optic device up for a moment, "We're in the middle of a city. Don't these people care about that? I know that this place is more or less abandoned, but what if someone went through there someday? That's dangerous!" He doubted anyone was going to pick up after themselves once Olympus left the area.

"Your honorable nature has been noted." Meryl said dryly, "Now how do we get through it? I can't see." She tried squinting her hardest to see some of the explosives that Johnny happened to be talking about, but she couldn't see a thing.

Johnny tapped on the scope over his face, "Well my goggles are special. They can zoom in like binoculars or they can switch to a thermal mode. I can see claymores hidden with stealth camouflage with these." He then looked back out into the trees, "And right now I can see claymores all over the place."

A small growl of grief left Meryl before she asked another question, "Can you find us a safe way through the forest to the helicopter?"

"I can try." Johnny replied. What were they going to do? Just sit there and stay out of the way? This was the best way to find a ride out of Lyon if a quick escape was needed, and it most certainly would be. With that in mind, the two of them began to head around the outside of the small wooded area to find a safe path in.

XxX

(With Naruto)

The darkened industrial district was easy for him to navigate once he disposed of his stealthy stalker at the construction site. According to periodical reports from Wolf, the entire riverside was clearing a path out. She had no idea why, but she said she would keep him informed in the meantime. Either way he was edging closer to the building at the edge where the two rivers met, the place where most of the activity was supposed to be.

Getting soaked to the bone in the rain didn't bother him a bit, but as he reached the massive building at the corner of the two rivers it was time to get himself in there and catch him an Ocelot.

Luckily for him, the two sides of the large building not on the riversides happened to be crammed close by other buildings, resulting in narrow alleys to keep him from having to walk on the ground and risk getting somehow spotted from a distance. He could take the rooftops and jump over onto the target roof, which was the course of action he proceeded to take.

The problem with that however, was the fact that once he got fairly close by way of rooftop progression he happened to see sentries posted regularly on the roofs, and the roofs were well lit, leading to a fully illuminated building that sat at the edge of the riverside. This forced Naruto to take cover behind a ventilation system posted on his roof to try and think of a way to get past to the main building.

He then remembered that he had the greatest long-range cover he could ever possibly ask for in one Sniper Wolf, thus he got himself on his Codec and got her on the other line, "Wolf, can you see over here?"

"_Absolutely little probie. Do you need my help?"_ Wolf asked, seemingly ready for whatever he wanted her for.

"Help is a very strong word for what I need Wolf." Naruto said in an attempt to save some face as he looked over the ventilation system to get a good view of all of the sentries, "How many do you see? I've got six from my view."

"_I see seven on the roofs near you, you're missing one of them somewhere but I don't know what you can see."_ Wolf explained to him before her voice turned deadly serious, "_But _do not_ go anywhere the edge of the target building roof's backsides near the rivers. They are crawling with dozens of Olympus mercenaries. If you are discovered by them then we might as well call this mission a failure right now."_

That much was easy to understand. Surprise was his greatest weapon and if he didn't have that there would be nothing he could do. Ocelot would see him coming and he would attempt to flee. He wasn't the kind of person to stay and fight for no reason, especially since there was no reason to stay at this rinky-dink riverside shipping warehouse. Hell, Ocelot ran from Shadow Moses before everything was even done.

But for now he needed to get to that main warehouse. The damn floodlights on the tops of the buildings were going to be a pain… maybe the cyborg ninja had the right idea with the stealth camouflage after all?

As he reached into his storage pouch and pulled out a fist full of shuriken he shook his head at having such a thought, 'No way. Stealth camouflage is a cheap trick for people that can't hide. Even when you do hide, if someone's attentive enough they can still catch you.' No, he didn't need that kind of gimmick, 'This kind of stuff is just what lets me prove why I'm the best.' Naruto thought of his current predicament, "Wolf how many do you think you can get without setting off an alert?"

"_Three."_ She answered without hesitation, _"You have a plan?"_

Naruto could see that on the rooftop they were pretty much in a formation that would let them see if anything went wrong with one of them, so he couldn't just rush them and hope for the best. And now he could see all seven of the guards. Fortunately he could make five more copies of himself.

"Hit who you can." Naruto said as he formed four clones behind his chosen cover, "But don't you fire a single shot until you see me and my clones move. We'll get whoever you can't before they even get their radios on to report shots fired and men down."

That would take some very risky timing. Wolf would have to shoot just as Naruto got close enough to stop the others from reporting and reacting to her shots, but she would have to make sure her shots were soon enough that no one saw him before he got too close and wound up being spotted, _"That's a very bold approach… Are you sure?"_

"Go ahead and pop your pills Wolf." Naruto told her, "It's game time."

"_If you're sure… and I am going to get you for that remark later little probie."_

Naruto and his clones stood up and prepared their multi-pronged attack, all of them clutching their shuriken ready for use, "We're going in five, four, three, two, one, now!" With that prompting, Naruto and his clones all jumped over the ventilation system and all separated, jumping to the separate rooftops to take the enemy down.

Wolf already had her first target in her sights, deciding to take out the targets furthest away from Naruto, not sure that he would reach them fast enough after catching their attention if she shot the ones closest to him. She could actually see the whites of the eyes of the first man actually widening once he caught a full sight of one of Naruto's clones and he was the first one to go down as just as Naruto's clone threw its fistful of shuriken, tearing into the neck of its target, Wolf fired her first shot and caught her target right above the brow.

As she chambered her next bullet, she took aim at her next target that bore witness to two Narutos cutting down two separate rooftop sentries, 'You're next…' She thought as she immediately fired and hit the man in the side of the head from her position across the river. Getting her next shot ready she saw the last two Narutos finish off their sentries with HF Blades, but he was moving far faster than she expected him of his clones to go, 'He is far faster without all of his equipment weighing him down.'

Luckily for her and the operation, the last man standing on the enemy side was close enough to Naruto and his clones that the last two to attack their targets managed to pelt him with shuriken, not missing the mark once as they knocked his radio out of his hand and riddled his body deeply with the sharp metal stars.

The man let out a low groan of pain but before he could properly aim his Mini-Uzi with the dozen shuriken throughout his body a shot from Wolf put him down, _"Clear."_ She said over her headset to Naruto who immediately dispelled all of his clones that were scattered throughout the roofs all around.

"Clear." Naruto replied over his Codec once his memories from all of his clones came back to him, forcing him to release a sigh once he thought about how close that could have been cut. If that last guard had managed to get off a few rounds then that could have caused the facility to go on alert, "Okay. Let me find a way into this place so I can start poking around."

"_Understood."_ Wolf said in reply, _"I will keep my eyes on the riverside concrete dock since Johnny and Meryl are out of my range. I have a bad feeling that something will come up very soon."_

Having a bad feeling wasn't just paranoia, because every bad feeling Naruto or anyone close to him ever had wound up translating into some actual terrible news for him or those around him sometime soon after the bad feeling took place. He needed to get himself into gear and hurry up if Wolf had a premonition, since she was especially observant.

Proceeding to one of the alley backsides of the shipping warehouse, Naruto found a fire escape and a door that wasn't connected to any alarm system due to the dilapidated state of the warehouse. The place barely had enough power for the floodlights on the roof in the first place. It was still locked from the outside though, as if that would be much of an issue for him, he could pick a lock with his teeth if he had to.

After a few seconds, the click of the door opening allowed Naruto to slip inside and get himself out of the rain, moving fast enough once he entered to keep a puddle from amassing at the entrance. The inside of the warehouse had low light, even in the upper level office area of the building that Naruto was in.

As he began skulking through the halls, a door to his right swung open. Naruto stood in place until he saw someone step from behind the door. Springing into action, Naruto jumped at the man and slammed him into the wall with his forearm against his throat to keep him from yelling out. As he held his initial target in place, he shot out a back kick that hit another man that had moved to attack him, knocking him back into the room he was about to emerge from.

Eventually the pressure from Naruto's powerful forearm against the man's carotid artery caused him to black out, allowing Naruto to drop him to the ground and head into the open room where he had kicked his other enemy. First and foremost, Naruto kicked the Uzi out of the man's hand before he could take aim at him. Disarmed by Naruto's raw speed and strength, he was a sitting duck for a punch that knocked his lights out.

With his enemies disposed of, Naruto went out and grabbed the man outside the room to drag him into the room that they were in. As he looked around, Naruto saw that they were in a break room, probably intended for warehouse employees when the warehouse was actually active. He stashed the two unconscious bodies in a single locker that sat along the right wall of the room and shut them inside before continuing on his way.

XxX

(With Johnny and Meryl)

Meryl was quite pleased as she and Johnny quietly crept out of the wooded area and into the disheveled, overgrown field that housed that helicopter they were after. Johnny actually proved to be really useful. Constantly pointing out where explosives were in the woods kept her from stumbling right into the claymores. Man, Naruto gave out easy missions. If this was all she had to do when she worked with him she'd run through the damn rain anytime. What an easy detail.

Her thoughts were derailed when Johnny held her back from walking forward towards the helicopter sitting out in the open of the field, "What's the big deal Johnny-boy?"

Johnny hurriedly shushed her and pointed at the helicopter, his goggles still over his face, "There's someone out here with us." He said quietly.

"What?" Meryl seemed shocked by that realization, "Why didn't you say that before we got close to the damn helicopter?"

Johnny backed away with his hands in a disarming defensive posture as an angry Meryl enhanced by thermal vision was even more intimidating than normal, "Hey, I was watching for all of the explosives in the woods. I couldn't pay attention to a chopper half a mile away. The thermal vision isn't even set to zoom in. These aren't normal scopes when I use the other attachments."

"You two talk too much." As the two young soldiers were busy discussing amongst themselves, someone stepped out of the passenger's section of the transport helicopter. A bulky man wearing a balaclava that looked like a human skull and long dreadlocks emerged wearing a grey denim jacket and black flak vest with strange looking grenades strapped all over his gear, "But you both got through the claymores I set in the woods with no problem so I guess I have to deal with you now." They couldn't even see his eyes as a pair of sunglasses sat on his face.

"You're damn right you have to deal with us." Meryl said as she reached for one of her Desert Eagles, "…Of course you could just give us the chopper and we don't have to do anything."

"…And you both could just leave." The Olympus mercenary said calmly, not being bothered by having Meryl and Johnny both pointing their weapons at him, "But neither of you will… no one ever does. So it's time to get rid of you." Just as he said that he dove back into the chopper's passenger section as Johnny and Meryl both fired at him and missed, "You've got to be faster than that brats." The man said as a pair of grenades flew over the chopper from where the man jumped out on the opposite side.

Not stupid enough to stand there when anything was flying at them from somebody else, both Johnny and Meryl immediately split off to avoid the grenades thrown at them. It was fortunate for them that they did, since once the grenades hit the ground and exploded they released a white chemical that began to shoot and billow up from the area with little ignited parts on the ground.

The sizzling noise got Meryl to drop her jaw as she got as far away from it as she could, "That bastard is using white phosphorus!"

"Isn't that illegal?" Johnny asked in return, picking himself up off of the ground from where he dove as he pulled his goggles back up to the top of his balaclava, "I thought it was against ground warfare laws to employ WP against personnel targets. It should at least be regulated, right?"

The man that threw the white phosphorus grenades scoffed from his cover on the other side of the chopper, "It's not illegal stupid, and even if it was do I look like I care? I'm not a part of any country's regular forces, I'm a mercenary. Grow up and smarten up or lay there and die." He said before launching another white phosphorus at Johnny.

Clamoring to his feet, Johnny quickly got up and ran away, narrowly escaping the incendiary grenade with a frightened shriek as he ran without pause.

Meryl on the other hand turned around the front of the chopper and pointed her Desert Eagle at the Olympus mercenary only to see him pointing a grenade launcher in her direction as he leaned against the chopper. Meryl immediately dove backwards hard back to her starting side of the chopper just as an explosion rang out in front of her from her enemy's attempt to blow her up.

She shielded her face to ensure minimal shrapnel damage just in case and landed hard on her back of her own volition. It was better than getting blown to hell any day, "What a shot…" She said to herself as she quickly got back up and checked herself over for damage, "He fired that with one free hand… from the hip." She was now thinking that she was going to have to take back the thought that this was an easy mission.

Hearing an explosion that wasn't directed at him snapped Johnny back into action as he made a direct about face and headed back towards the chopper marking the center of the field, "Meryl! Are you alright?"

"I'm fine!" She assured him, noticing the enemy take a peek through the open passenger door of the helicopter. She took a shot with her Desert Eagle, missing and forcing him to take cover again, "Who is this guy?" She muttered as she kept up her aim in case he showed himself again.

"You can call me Hephaestus." The man shouted before following up, "Not that it really matters, but you should have a name to go with the face of the one that's going to kill you!" At that moment he took aim through the passenger doors with his grenade launcher and fired directly at Meryl who let out a gasp before she found herself tackled to the ground by Johnny, allowing the shot to miss and pass them, exploding a few feet away with them out of its blast radius, "So you can run, duck, and hide. That's something worth mentioning I guess." Hephaestus said derisively as he reloaded his grenade launcher.

Johnny got up and helped Meryl to her feet, "Are you alright?" He asked her getting a nod from her as they both kept one eye on the helicopter Hephaestus was hiding behind lest he catch them off guard with an attack, "Man… this rain is really giving me a cold." He said before sneezing, luckily having it blocked from spraying on Meryl by his balaclava, "This really isn't going to help my stomach…"

Meryl gave him a completely incredulous look, "We're being attacked by some guy with a grenade launcher and white phosphorus hand grenades, and you're still on about your stomach?" The queasy groan of said stomach was her answer, "Well you can deal with that if we survive this!" She yelled, shoving Johnny away as another white phosphorus grenade flew at them from above.

"I don't think I can hold it for that long!" Johnny yelled back as his boots squished in the wet grass underneath him with every step he proceeded to run.

"Then hurry up and let's beat this guy already!" Meryl yelled at him as she saw Hephaestus pop his head out from cover again, giving her a target to shoot at, "I fucking want you to drop dead damn it! I am not getting paid enough for this!"

Johnny's knees gave out on him as Meryl proceeded to try and fire through any visible spot she could see to try and hit Hephaestus, switching to her alternate Desert Eagle when she ran out of bullets instead of wasting time reloading, "M-Meryl I don't think I have that much time left here!"

Meryl let out a growl at her partner before ducking and diving out of the way of another shot from the grenade launcher, "The faster this ends the sooner you can take your stupid crap! Now get your shit together and let's finish this, Sniper Wolf and Naruto are waiting!"

Hephaestus let out a snicker from behind his skull facemask, "If you two are done talking about someone's upset stomach-."

He never really got to finish because apparently Johnny decided to forego all caution and ignore the grenade launcher set to defend Hephaestus at a moment's notice. Looking into the young man's eyes, Hephaestus saw nothing but panic and intense pain… and then he felt it because Johnny proceeded to open fire with his AKS-74u.

Johnny's aim was too erratic to be accurate, but a vast majority of his bullets struck true. Not only did he shoot Hephaestus, he did substantial damage to a few of the grenades strapped to his person, forcing the volatile incendiary weapons to go off while still strapped to him, engulfing the man in white phosphorus that began to burn him quickly.

Meryl ran around the other side of the helicopter once Hephaestus's shrieks of horrible pain began to ring out through the field. She was treated to the sight of just what that particular chemical reaction could do to the human body, seeing his clothing burn away as well as his balaclava, revealing him to be a black man. As he writhed on the ground in anguish his tissue began to be burned into in front of her eyes and that was all she could take of that.

She immediately turned her head and fired her Desert Eagle at Hephaestus repeatedly until her clip ran dry. Even then she didn't turn back towards him, instead walking towards the other side of the helicopter with her hand over her mouth, 'That could have been one of us… what a horrible way to die.' Meryl thought to herself, taking a few deep breaths to fight down her panic.

She had never actually seen anyone's face when they died. The Genome Soldiers at Shadow Moses all wore balaclava, and even Psycho Mantis had the mask on when he died. Even when Naruto killed Liquid in front of her he had been inadvertently directly blocking her and Solid Snake's view of his rather graphic demise. But being burned alive by white phosphorous had to be a whole different league of horrible death. Shooting him in that case was a matter of mercy, because things were going to be way worse for him had she not.

Well what was done was done. Maybe getting back to work again would get Hephaestus's death out of her mind. An explosion from the wooded area surrounding them alerted her. That was good, it meant that the others that were posted throughout the area couldn't outright navigate the woods either with all of the explosives littering it. It was definitely time to go, "Johnny?" She said, trying to shake the anxiety out of her voice, "I think it's time to get this bird into the air and get out of here."

"…One minute please." Johnny said from the other side of the helicopter before letting out a pained groan, "Don't come over here either!" The sound of his stomach churning gave way to him speaking again, "Man… this was my last balaclava too…"

Meryl frowned and climbed into the helicopter, shutting both passenger door and sitting to wait for Johnny, hoping he'd hurry up, "…Still gross."

XxX

(With Naruto – Riverside Transport Warehouse)

After heading down a few hallways, the path opened up into a balcony and catwalk overseeing the main portion of the warehouse. Naruto simply didn't stop running and jumped from the catwalk up into the structural metal parts of the warehouse ceiling to keep from staying out in the open, instead choosing to stay in the dark as voices could be heard beneath him.

Below him in the main portion of the warehouse, other than some left alone massive metal shelves and a large stack of metal transport crates one would see on ships, the place was vacant, but there was a medical smell in the air that smelled strongly of disinfectant. It was like Naruto had just recently missed something transpiring in there, especially since a lot of equipment seemed to be getting shipped out to the back of the building towards the riverside.

'Damn, they're clearing the place out.' Naruto thought to himself from his place in the rafters. Whatever Olympus had taken up temporary residence in the warehouse for was seemingly over and they were getting the hell out of dodge. He put this out of mind and began to focus on the voices coming from below.

A grey-haired man with a beard and a dark suit led the way through the warehouse. He had on a tan tie and a dark hat, keeping his glasses out of Naruto's clear view as the man seemingly observed the Olympus mercenaries that were taking equipment of all shapes and sizes out of the building, "Sorry about the clutter Ocelot." He said in a thick Eastern European accent, "But you're leaving tonight aren't you? Are you sure I can't interest you in any prosthetic parts? I can assure you that you would be far happier that you would be with what you chose to replace your right arm with."

'Arm?' Naruto thought to himself as he listened in, 'I thought Gray Fox only cut his hand off? Why'd he take off his whole arm and get it replaced?'

True to the statement of the doctor, Ocelot's entire right arm was covered in a heavy thick cast and sling to keep it protected. Following behind him was a rather physically imposing man that looked around Ocelot's age and had grey hair and a grey beard, wearing a dark trench coat, "Well in the end it was my choice Dr. Markov." Ocelot said to the man leading them through the warehouse, "Perhaps you could interest my associate here in some of your artificial creations however?"

"Hmm." Markov said in thought, "It would be an honor for the last President of the United States to take an interest in some of my equipment." He turned around towards the man following Ocelot, "So what do you think? You've seen quite a bit of my work since you and Ocelot have been in Lyon for his surgery."

"Don't refer to me as any sort of 'President' again." The man stated in a serious voice, "Being referred to as a President just says that I was once _their_ figurehead pawn. From now on if you are to call me anything, I am Solidus Snake; the perfect copy…"

'That's President Sears? And he's another Snake?' Naruto thought to himself up in the rafters with eyes narrowed on the man with Ocelot, 'And what does he mean he's a perfect copy? A perfect copy of Big Boss?' Despite hearing of the man for years, Naruto had never seen a picture of Big Boss at all or knew exactly what the man was capable of. He was more of an urban legend if Naruto had to label him as anything at all. That wasn't the foremost concern Naruto had at the moment however, 'What the hell is the old President doing here?'

Sears resigned shortly after Shadow Moses went public. The book of Natasha Romanenko's that Naruto gave his input on around a month ago was released very shortly thereafter and exposed many things about that incident. Despite being heavily abridged it still exposed a litany of information that otherwise would never have been known by the public.

"And your chance to get 'them' back will come, don't you worry." Ocelot seemingly assured him, "The plans are going smoothly. It's only a matter of time now until we get the desired reaction we had anticipated. Every crackpot nation or any engineer with the right amount of cash can get the plans to REX to make their own imperfect copy. We were paid handsomely for offloading the plans onto the black market. That woman's book romanticized REX as a truly terrifying weapon that others would jump at."

"Good." Solidus said as a smirk came to his face, "Very good… now we wait. When the Patriots make their move in response to all of the pirated Metal Gear derivatives in the world that could risk their power then we'll proceed to move forward."

Dr. Markov raised an eyebrow behind his glasses, "You already have a plan in place?" He said, quite impressed if that possibility happened to be true.

Solidus nodded, "Of course. It's bare bones to say the least, but once things are placed into motion it will more or less set itself up. For now I have to go into hiding to avoid their agents, but the Patriot grip on the U.S. will crumble one day and return to the fundamental idea of freedom it was meant to be."

Markov let out a laugh as one of his mercenaries walked up to him and the group, "Well if that happens to be the case then leave me out of it. I don't want to involve myself in any kind of open conflict like that. I just want the money to further my research, and Olympus more than provides me with that. This was merely a job." He turned towards the man walking up to him, "Yes Helios? You have news for me?"

The man Helios was very tall and muscular, but thin, and had short brown hair and scars all over his face as well as a tribal tattoo on the side of his neck. He wore no shirt, which exposed his plethora of scars all over his torso, most notably dark thick scars at his shoulders and a roughly octagonal one right in the center of his chest. He wore a red bandanna around his right arm, a pair of leather gloves, black boots, and a thick pair of dark blue pants that kept grenades and ammunition attached to the belt and supplies all throughout both of his legs.

"Dr. Markov the supplies are all loaded and ready to be transported." Helios said in a low voice tinted with an Australian accent, "We can leave whenever you're ready to go." He sounded extremely bored and low on motivation as he did this, but Markov didn't seem to notice, even as he looked around in a seemingly vacant manner.

"Very good." Markov said before turning to Ocelot and Solidus, "I believe that once your transport arrives our business is concluded gentlemen."

Ocelot smirked at Markov and let out a chuckle, "Don't spend all of your money in one place Markov…"

Markov returned the chuckle with one of his own, "Oh Ocelot, I always do." He then gestured for them to follow them, "Come, let us continue to wait for your transport in my limousine outside. It should be here any minute yes?" Markov asked before turning to Helios, "Helios please do one last check of the warehouse and contact Charon, Hephaestus, and Bishamonten. It's time for us to clear the area." Helios let out a grunt to show that he understood his directions, getting another chuckle out of Markov as he, Ocelot, and Solidus left to head outside, "…Helios is the pinnacle of my Next-Generation Physical research."

Helios merely stayed in place after he left, staring up at the rafters. Naruto could swear he was looking right at him, but there was no way in hell he could see him with his naked eye. It was pitch black up there, no light whatsoever. Naruto didn't even make a presence up there. He was no dummy on how to hide.

After a minute or two, Helios barked out an order to the few remaining Olympus mercenaries in the warehouse, "All of you get out now." He said abruptly, leaving no room for argument, "All of Dr. Markov's gear is outside. You lot don't need to be in here anymore." His eyes never left the rafters where Naruto sat, even as member of the mercenaries ran up to him.

"Sir are you sure that we should-?" The man promptly found himself caught by the throat with one of Helios's hands, choking him tightly and forcing him to drop his Mini-Uzu as he clutched at Helios's arm desperately in an effort to relieve some of the pressure and get himself some air.

"I said leave." Helios said with an edge in his voice as he continued to stare up at Naruto, not even acknowledging the man he was choking by looking at him despite the fact that he could feel the stress on the man's neck from his grip, "Killing you means nothing to me just so you know. No matter what I do, Markov will keep me around. I could kill every last one of you if I wanted to, and nothing would happen to me because I'm worth his entire unit. I just don't do it because killing you all would be so laughably easy it wouldn't be worth the time." He then threw him to the ground, "Now _leave_."

This time, the man on the ground didn't think twice about clearing out as he vacated the premises immediately. He didn't even bother picking up his gun, something that Helios took note of, as before the man could even get away he pulled out his own Mini-Uzi and fired at him, hitting the man in the back and killing him unceremoniously.

Naruto grit his teeth up in the rafters at watching Helios kill his own comrade as he heard the scarred man begin to laugh below, "Well he at least served a purpose. He was a warm up…" Helios said before turning his Mini-Uzi up to the rafters and firing at Naruto. A grin came over his face as he could see Naruto dart through the shadows avoiding his shots easily as he emptied the rest of his clip, "…You're the main event."

In response to being called the main event, Naruto fired from the rafters at him, but Helios was able to dodge the shot with pure speed as he moved fast enough that the force his legs generated cracked the concrete floor he ran on, "What the fuck?" Naruto said to himself as he watched how fast Helios was. It was comparable to Gray Fox as the Cyborg Ninja, the way his limbs moved in blurs, "Markov did that damn exoskeleton crap to you?" Naruto asked in a heated manner. He had a temper when it came to involuntary experimentation.

Helios merely laughed, "Someone didn't like being a guinea pig did they?" He taunted as he came to a stop on the ground, staring up at Naruto in the rafters, "I _wanted_ this!" He grabbed at a large metal crate and actually peeled off some of the hull with his bare hands as if it were made of tin foil. He then threw the jagged chunk of metal into the rafters at Naruto hard enough to damage the supports of the ceiling.

Naruto wisely jumped down from the rafters and landed on one of the massive metal shelves in the room, but this wasn't safe either as Helios merely ran at the shelf and slammed into it full speed with his entire body, knocking it and the others behind it over like a stack of dominoes.

Timing the tipping over of the shelf perfectly, Naruto rolled through upon hitting the ground and twisted around to take a few more shots at Helios who again sprinted out of view, cackling madly all the way, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Naruto made five copies of himself and sent them out to help him deal with Helios. A trio of the five clones attacked the man all at once. He caught the flying kick of one clone and swung it and himself around in a circle to smash a second clone with a crushing amount of force, taking both of them out.

The third clone got in good enough to land a heavy haymaker of a punch that sent Helios stumbling back. Naruto took advantage of this and moved forward as did his two remaining clones. The original Naruto sprang off of his third clone's back into the air as high as he could go while the last two clones surrounded Helios and joined the third clone in an attempt to kick him into the air, "U! Zu! Ma! Ki!"

Each kick was blocked, as there was no fourth clone to get Helios's blindspot from behind. They barely managed to get him off of the ground, "That's a weird party trick. Nice try though. Maybe if I wasn't so powerful that would have gotten me." Helios said as he brushed the clones' kicks off and took a swing at one, dispelling it. The other two clones then promptly dispelled and Helios looked up to see Naruto with a blue ball of energy in his hand.

Immediately ducking out of the falling Naruto's path, the young blonde's Rasengan attempt did nothing but pulverize the concrete floor and leave a telltale spiral marking where impact had been made. Using the momentum that a Rasengan would provide in reverse, Naruto pushed off from his attempt at a jutsu and flew at Helios with a heightened burst of speed. Naruto quickly closed in on Helios and gave him a hellacious slash with his HF Blade before spinning through and delivering a midair kick that sent Helios flying, bouncing off of the top corner of the stack of metal containers in the center of the room like a football before disappearing over the other side.

"I don't need to fight this guy…" Naruto said to himself as he tried to reason that going toe-to-toe with Helios would be more trouble for no real reason. It wasn't his mission and he decided then and there to beat a tactical retreat out to the riverside to just snatch and grab Ocelot and be on his way. It probably wouldn't be that easy, but it was better than giving him time to get away. It wasn't like this fight was quiet either. As he made to leave the warehouse he heard the groan of metal and his eyes widened as he looked at the top of the stack of metal crates in the middle of the room, "You've got to be kidding me."

The manic look on the face of Helios as he stood up there wasn't Naruto's concern, it was the fact that he was holding one of the crates above his head and staring directly at Naruto as he sported his quite evil grin. Before he could chuck the crate at Naruto, the doors leading outside to the riverside flew open and a dozen Olympus mercenaries poured in, taking aim at Naruto and firing as he ducked down behind the overturned metal shelves for cover.

Helios took offense to this and turned towards the other Olympus mercenaries before he angrily hurled the crate at them, hitting them and outright crushing more than a few, but making contact with them all. He threw the crate so hard it ripped a hole in the metal wall of the warehouse and poked outside a bit, "If you weaklings don't stay out of my fight I'll kill you before I kill him! My body can't be stopped!" Helios shouted to the top of the warehouse until someone landed on his level of crates he happened to be standing on. Turning around he saw a flash of an angry Naruto's facemask covered visage before the black gloved fist of said young man filled his eyesight.

Beginning with a hellacious punch that didn't knock Helios off of his feet, Naruto began pounding away on his face with repeated shots that sent him in a steady backpedal towards the end of the metal crates. Planning a vicious combination once he managed to knock Helios from the containers, Naruto wasn't even expecting a counterattack, but that was what he got when Helios caught one of his punches firmly in the palm of his hand.

The feeling of the pressure Helios exerted on gripping his fist alarmed Naruto. He could actually hold him back, "My turn." Helios said with a bloody face as he jerked Naruto towards him and delivered a return punch that made Naruto feel as if he had walked full-on into an iron door. Helios then began to unleash his own combination on Naruto, though his attacks were heavier; long lunging hooks that turned Naruto's head back and forth, and if he felt Naruto was stumbling away from him too quickly he would grab him with his long arms and pull him back into a knee to the body.

At first Naruto was paralyzed at the realization of how strong Helios was, but once he remembered that Helios somehow had cybernetic enhancements like Gray Fox he focused again. He had never taken a punch from Gray Fox at Shadow Moses Island, but he had seen firsthand how strong he was. Naruto would be damned if he would be taking this onslaught without retaliation.

Taking another punch, Naruto spun through with the hook and retaliated with a roundhouse kick to the face that broke Helios's attack and hit him hard enough to knock him off-balance as he stumbled back to keep from falling down.

'Alright, enough fucking around.' Naruto thought as he immediately started pulling out the throwing knives that lined his pants and began pelting Helios with them. It was time to bring this little encounter to an end. Each and every small weapon hit Helios as he attempted to shield himself with his arms, though the ones that hit his arms seemed to bounce off of him. With the ferocity of the remainder of his attack, Naruto didn't notice that very much.

Following up on his throwing knife barrage, Naruto drew his HF Blade and slashed at Helios with one arm before spinning through and attacking again with a nasty surprise attack in his right hand, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"

The blue spinning orb of energy hit Helios in his arms just as Naruto's HF Blade attack did. Helios had been keeping his arms up in an 'x' formation since Naruto's brutal attack began, and once Naruto hit him with the Rasengan he was sent flipping and flying through the air until his body smacked the wall of the warehouse hard enough to leave a deep dent the size and shape of his body in the metal wall paneling.

Naruto just stood staring at Helios with his arm still outstretched from thrusting with the Rasengan as he watched the man slowly pull himself out of the wall and drop face-first onto the ground before he began to pick himself up again. Gritting his teeth under his facemask as he saw Helios begin to roll over to his back and move, Naruto ran towards the end of the containers and jumped into the air, another Rasengan in his hand as he landed on Helios and slammed it into his chest, "Die!" The resulting impact caused a low 'boom' noise and cracked the ground underneath Helios.

Instead of pulverizing Helios into the ground the way he had anticipated, Naruto found his Rasengan hand pulled back off of his target by the man himself, holding Naruto's arm back with both of his own. The skin on Helios's arms seemed to be heavily damaged, revealing mechanical parts underneath, and his chest was heavily damaged with deep and violent tissue damage. The thing about the damage to his torso however was that Naruto had actually hit Helios dead-center with the Rasengan, even if it had only been for a moment.

The Rasengan in Naruto's held back hand faded as he looked down at Helios in pure shock. In the center of his chest where the octagon-shaped scar had been, the skin and tissue had been peeled away and revealed a metal object stuck directly inside of Helios's body, pulsing a glowing red with every beat of his heart, 'Is that a power generator?' Naruto thought to himself in a horrified way.

Helios could see where Naruto's attention was drawn and smirked as he continued to hold onto Naruto's arm with both hands, "Impressive isn't it ninja boy?" He said as his grip with one hand seemed to tighten, "You're the first one to see this since it's been put in." He quickly grabbed one of the guns from Naruto's thigh holsters and shoved it into the blonde's shoulder of his Rasengan arm, "Congratulations." He said before firing the SOCOM repeatedly into Naruto's shoulder.

XxX

(With Sniper Wolf – Across the Saône River – Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière)

Wolf grit bit her lip as she could see a small private plane come into sight, getting lower and lower as it attempted to line up its descent on the very clear and brightly lit riverside of the Saône. That was how someone was going to leave. If that got off of the ground then they weren't going to be able to get another shot at Ocelot so easily again anytime soon. Orders were very specific for getting Ocelot alive, and Wolf's trigger finger was very itchy as she had the man directly in her sights.

He was standing out in the open, out in the rain next to Dr. Markov and another man in a trench coat and she had to train her scope off of him to try and rid herself of the temptation to take a shot at him. It would have been so easy, he didn't even know she was there.

However they seemed slightly distracted by whatever was happening inside of the warehouse nearby, 'What on Earth are you doing in there little probie?' It was clear that Naruto was the one at the center of whatever was going on, but Olympus mercenaries were prevented from going inside by Markov's orders. He seemed to be assuring Ocelot and the man with him that whatever was happening inside was under control.

She took that moment to look at the man that Ocelot was with and backed away from her rifle in shock as she let out a loud gasp, "Saladin!" The man looked just like Big Boss in his later years, just the way that Solid Snake looked similar to him in his youth. Once she got herself under control, she looked through the scope again, "No, it's not Saladin…" This Big Boss lookalike had both of his eyes. The real Big Boss had been missing his right eye and covered it with an eye patch.

Still, even though she could tell that the man wasn't Big Boss, Wolf could only marvel at this person's appearance. Even as the plane landed all she could do was just stare. It wasn't just his appearance looking like Big Boss. She knew this man from somewhere else, she just couldn't put her finger on it. It was eating at her though, she should have known who that was.

For now though, she couldn't get through to Naruto from her headset as he wasn't picking up his Codec to answer her. He must have been in some real jeopardy if that were the case, not in a position to stop and talk to her whatsoever.

The plane was at the far end of the makeshift runway as Olympus mercenaries helped to turn it around and prepare for it to make its takeoff to leave. Ocelot, Dr. Markov, and the Big Boss lookalike all began to walk their way towards the private jet.

"Come on Naruto…" Wolf said to herself as Naruto still hadn't picked up yet, "You've got to hurry up."

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Naruto)

Naruto staggered back holding his shoulder and biting his facemask so intensely to keep from screaming in pain he ripped through the fabric over his face. Sasuke's Chidori to the shoulder from six years earlier didn't even hurt that badly, mostly because the lightning generated from the attack numbed the point of penetration, but still. He had just taken eight consecutive gunshots in the exact same spot, his shoulder was now a useless hunk of dangling meat at this juncture.

Helios had let go of Naruto's arm after emptying the remainder of Naruto's SOCOM magazine into his shoulder to begin cackling raucously from his back, not even bothering to get up to follow up his attack against him.

Slumping his back against the stacked metal containers, Naruto turned his head to the ceiling and finally let out a loud pained yell, "Fuck!" He clutched his shoulder wound tightly, "What the fuck are you? I carved into your chest and you're still fucking alive!" He shouted at Helios.

Acknowledging Naruto's shouts for his attention, Helios sat up cross-legged and looked at him, still grinning maniacally, "That's a good question." He pointed to the power generator in his chest, "My limbs were totally mangled in Hong Kong when I worked for Interpol. A nasty bit of business with a drug cartel a year or so ago." He banged on his legs and let out a chuckle, "But old Dr. Markov… he fixed me right up for free. Though it was just so he could experiment with some new high-performance replacement limbs."

"And the glowing red timebomb in your chest?" Naruto hissed out lowly, blood pouring out of his shoulder through his fingers as he pressed his hand against the wound tightly. He could probably stick two fingers into the wound and out through the backside of it.

"My limbs took too much energy to power. More than my body could provide by itself without sapping all of my bioenergy." Helios said as he rocked onto his back and sprang up to his feet in a rather carefree manner, beginning to pick the throwing knives Naruto hit his body with out of his torso, grunting with each one yanked free, "So he placed this little perpetual generator in my body. Every move I make powers my limbs, making every step I take, and every breath I give... every motion my body gives off powers my special features. The side effect is that with all of that energy I can't sleep, and my body never really comes to a rest. That's why I want to fight difficult battles. So that I can utilize all of this pent up energy that never sees any use."

He saw signs of the world's technological advancements every day and yet when faced with something like this he still couldn't comprehend. And people would call him a freak once they found out his powers when guys like Helios were all running around because of science.

Naruto pushed himself off of the containers, letting his right arm hang freely as he couldn't hold onto it and fight at the same time if he wanted to survive, "Why aren't you dead? You have a giant power generator in your chest instead of a heart."

"It _is_ a heart." Helios said, "It's just a better, tougher heart than yours. That little glowing ball you used would have turned your own heart into paste right? Well this is good old-fashioned machinery, so it can take a real pounding. You can't kill me like that."

"Wonderful…" Naruto growled to himself. All of these people had shortcuts that made them better instead of gaining skill. There was a difference between upgrading equipment and… this. He could understand keeping up to date with the newest weapons, body armor, etcetera, but this was something else altogether. The limits of someone's body were put there for a reason, so that when you were physically unable to continue your job you stopped, "When your limbs are mangled so bad you can't get them fixed and have to cut them off that's kind of your cue to _stop fucking fighting_!" Naruto then drew his other SOCOM and started firing directly at Helios.

He got off three shots before Helios directly charged him and smashed him into the side of the metal container he had just pushed himself off of. He took all three bullets and made sure his arms covered his face. As long as he wasn't getting shot in the head he didn't care about getting wounded.

Grabbing Naruto by the shoulder, Helios relished in the yell of pain that came from him once his fingers dug into the wound, "Sorry, does that hurt?" He asked sarcastically before slamming a punch directly into Naruto's stomach and throwing him away to slide across the floor, "You're good. You actually hurt me." He stomped over to Naruto as the younger man pulled himself to sitting up on his knees with his head down, "It's too bad we've got to end this. I could beat on someone like you all night. You're almost as indestructible as me." He lifted both of his hands in a double sledgehammer attack, but as he brought them both down to crack Naruto's skull or break his neck a strong hand from Naruto found itself buried in his stomach as a receipt for earlier.

Naruto's head slowly turned up to look into Helios's eyes. Instead of the deep blue that they usually were they were blood red with slitted pupils. Behind the facemask on his face Naruto was growling deeply as the wound on his shoulder seemed to knit itself back together, the muscle and tissue seeming to fix itself far faster than humanly feasible.

As he spoke with his fist still in Helios's stomach, Naruto's voice was more gravelly than previously, "Indestructible? Let's see how indestructible you are when I rip you apart limb from limb!" Naruto said as a red cloak of energy surrounded his body in the shape of a fox, two tails protruding from the back of it. Both tails viciously batted Helios away from Naruto, sending him flying across the warehouse and slamming into another wall, again denting it deeply with his own body.

Helios was wondering what the hell he was facing as Naruto was pouring out pure murderous intent, but Naruto wasn't going to give him a chance to think about it. The supercharged Naruto immediately jumped to the top of the stack of crates and effortlessly picked one up, hurling it across the building and hitting Helios flush, driving it into the metal paneled wall like a stake. And like a stake Naruto used three more crates as a hammer, throwing them across the warehouse and pounding the one sticking out of the wall further into the punctured metal wall until it fell outside.

Silence reigned other than the sound of Naruto's chakra cloak until the sounds of punching gave way to Helios tearing another hole into the wall, blood pouring off of him, but a more treacherous grin than ever on his face as he stared down Naruto and the red fox outline around him. In his hand was a bloody Mini-Uzi, probably 'confiscated' from an unfortunate Olympus mercenary outside.

Helios pointed the gun at Naruto and fired only for Naruto to more or less move out of the way like a red streak. His eyes were barely able to keep track of Naruto, but his aim was not and he quickly emptied the clip not hitting Naruto once. Helios let out a grunt of anger and threw the gun to the side, but once his arm was fully extended from the throw he found it firmly caught in Naruto's clawed grasp.

He locked eyes with Naruto as the young man began to squeeze on the arm and slowly crush it. Helios grit his teeth at the fact that he was slowly beginning to be overwhelmed and punched Naruto right in the head with his other hand, expecting him to let go. The punch caused Naruto to begin bleeding from his hairline, but that swiftly ceased and Naruto glared at him, moving his free hand to the HF Blade on his back and drawing it like a flash to sever the arm of Helios's that he had a hold of, cutting it off at the elbow.

Blood and other different fluids sprayed freely from the wound as Helios stumbled back looking at his stump of a powered artificial limb, "Gah! You bastard, I'll kill you! You think you're-!" He was cut off by a stab that was driven through his chest, but was just left of his generator, as it seemingly was deflected off of it, "You missed!" Helios taunted with the HF Blade in his chest, and Naruto promptly responded by cracking him hard in the face with a punch that sent him flying into the wall of the warehouse.

Naruto let out a yelling roar and charged Helios, returning the earlier favor by plowing into him and knocking down the entire wall of the warehouse, only this time he had a little something special to go with it. In his good hand he had a Rasengan surrounded by a red shell of his chakra that he slammed into Helios.

The violent impact of the attack took out the entire wall of the warehouse, exposing it to the outside elements of the rainstorm. With the wall that had already been torn asunder earlier by both men, the wall that had just fallen, and the damaged ceiling of the already rusty, dilapidated building, it was all that the place could take as the entire warehouse fell down as if an F-5 hurricane had hit it.

XxX

(With Sniper Wolf)

Her attention was caught by the complete collapse of the warehouse that she was certain Naruto had been in, but she then saw the light jet a mile down the riverside beginning to head down the makeshift runway to take off.

'No, it can't just end like this with no chance to get Ocelot at all.' Wolf thought as she turned her rifle on the plane. She wasn't going to shoot through the windshield of the jet. Even if she could penetrate the super-tough windshield and kill the pilot it would just end with the plane crashing and the death of Ocelot. There was a second option that she took, shooting her powerful sniper rifle at the front tire of the plane.

Sniper Wolf's first bullet ripped the wheel cover right off and the second bullet hit the wheel itself and had the light jet lose its momentum, forcing it to slow and head to the end of the runway to turn around and try again. A small smile came to her lips as she had just bought Naruto another few minutes to try and complete the mission.

XxX

(With Naruto)

Naruto threw the debris from the warehouse off of himself and reached back in it, Kyuubi chakra still burning through his system. With one good arm he pulled out Helios by one arm. The man was not only missing most of his right arm that Naruto himself cut off, but his entire right leg and most of his left, both of which were also enhanced prosthetics, "You see?" Helios said before coughing, "You can't kill me kid! I'm indestructible!" Naruto's HF Blade was still stuck in his chest as he spoke.

Naruto growled and threw him onto the wrecked warehouse remains onto his back as he walked over to him.

"What are you going to do now?" Helios taunted, "You can't finish me!"

Naruto didn't say a word, he just grabbed the handle of the HF Blade and held onto it tight. After a moment Helios began to feel the blade heat up as it began to be dragged through his chest. He let out an intense yell of pain as Naruto began to use the powerful cutting weapon to literally carve the power generator core out of his chest. Once he cut it out he pulled the bloody perpetual generator from Helios's chest and held it up in front of the man like a trophy as he gasped deeply, unable to even form words anymore.

Naruto just stared down at him until the man expired and proceeded to chuck the generator into the river. His enemy destroyed, Naruto allowed the Kyuubi's chakra to fade while he sheathed the HF Blade. The wound that he had suffered to his shoulder had closed up, but it was still a useless limb at the moment.

As he looked up, Naruto's eyes widened at the sight of the light jet about to take off down the riverside. Naruto stumbled his way out of the wreckage of the warehouse and put his good hand to his ear to set a new Codec frequency. A single sharp ping rang through his ears in response to the frequency he put in and he put his hand down to return to focus on running after the plane as it went down the riverside to take off.

No matter how fast he could run he couldn't catch up to the plane, 'Come on where is it?' He thought to himself. Using that much of the Kyuubi's chakra really took it out of him once he went back to normal, 'I thought Olga brought it to Lyon. Wouldn't she have put it somewhere nearby if this was the area that she expected us to be operating in?'

His thoughts were cut short when from behind him a flying object came up from above the buildings and settled to fly beside Naruto. A relieved smile came to his face as he jumped onto his platform board and began to speed up in his attempt to catch up to the jet before it took off. He didn't know just what the board's top speed was as he had never gone any faster than 40 mph on it, but now was the time to see just how fast it could go straight ahead.

"Come on!" Naruto shouted as he held his injured arm and leaned his body forward to increase his speed even further. The plane touched off of the ground and began to climb as Naruto attempted to follow it, but his board just couldn't go fast enough to keep up with it as he began an ill-fated chase through the skies of Lyon. There was no way the board could go as fast as a jet, and the jet pulled away easily, leaving Naruto behind in the air only to slow down and watch it leave.

He didn't have any weapon on him to attempt to shoot it down with. He couldn't pull a movie stunt and jump to grab a hold of the jet, even with chakra since he would never get close to reaching it with the attempt.

All he could do was hang in the sky over the city doing circles on his board in the rain, just shaking his head. He pulled down his facemask at last to reveal the pronounced frown on his face, "Damn it…" He said quietly to himself. Getting a chance to corner Ocelot like that would probably never come again. Ocelot never saw him though… that was one good thing out of all of this at least. Something to ponder as the sound of helicopter blades filled his ears and his Codec went off.

"_Boss!"_ Naruto heard Johnny say once he answered his device, _"We've got the ride out of here!"_

Naruto remained hovering in the air on his board as the helicopter hovered behind him with the passenger door open, "Naruto we've got to go!" Meryl yelled over the sound of the chopper, "Come on!"

With one last sigh, Naruto guided his board into the chopper and allowed it to power down as Meryl shut the door and Johnny finally got the chance to fly them away to a safe zone. A growl passed from his throat as he sat down in a seat and pulled off his headband, "Well that was a failure…"

Wolf sat next to him and Meryl sat across from him, both taking note of his injured appearance, "You look like hell." Meryl commented, "…Again."

"Two times in less than six months." Wolf commented, feeling his injured arm, "It seems like you can't go very long at all without hurting yourself little probie. But the last time it was because of Metal Gear… what did it to you this time?"

"A psycho with knockoff Gray Fox parts." Naruto replied, leaning his head back in his chair, "But hey, at least I can say I got to see the President of the United States up close and personal."

Meryl blinked in confusion, "You saw the President? What's James Johnson doing here in Lyon with Ocelot?" She asked curiously. Even Johnny turned his head back from the front to listen in.

"Not that President, I'm not talking about the new one." Naruto said with a shake of his head. He couldn't care less about who was President. None of that mattered to him, "Fuck that guy, I'm talking about the last one… old what's-his-face was with Ocelot about to go underground." God, he was terrible with these nameless interchangeable suits at the top of the chain of command in America. It wasn't like any of the Presidents were ever as cool as any of the kages in the Elemental Nations, now those were some leaders someone could remember.

But upon mentioning the last President, Wolf clamped down hard on his injured arm. Naruto letting out a yelp of pain brought her back to reality, "You're saying that the man Ocelot was with was the President?" She asked, getting a nod out of Naruto, "That man was President Sears?" Now that she thought about it he did look like him, only without the beard back when he was in office. She was just as bad with the figures at the top as Naruto was if she wasn't supposed to kill them, otherwise there was no reason for her to know or care about them.

All of this stuff was making Meryl's head hurt. Wasn't this just about Ocelot? Didn't Naruto just want to find him because he was his only link to the conspiracy behind all of the Shadow Moses crap and even more? She wanted to know to since apparently she was used as a threat for her uncle to even take part in the mission in the first place in order to ensure her safety. What the hell was the previous President doing with Ocelot going into hiding?

"Hold on one minute." Meryl finally said with a befuddled look on her face as her mindset had just taken a hit, "I think you should tell us everything from the start since some of us were busy doing stuff somewhere else." Johnny grunted in affirmation from the front of the helicopter.

"I'd rather get some sleep while I can…" Naruto said somewhat desperately, "I'll just end up repeating everything I'd say to you guys when I debrief to Olga… and she might kick my ass for not getting Ocelot in the end." He then realized that he never even proved whether or not Ocelot was really against Sergei Gurlukovich. Nothing he said placed him at odds against the man whatsoever so he couldn't even fall back on having dredged up an Ocelot scheme.

Other than finding out that Ocelot had sold the Metal Gear REX plans to the highest bidder on the black market, something that they already thought about before any of this even happened in the first place, they had jack, "…Yeah, Olga's totally going to kick the crap out of me." Failing missions sucked.

XxX

Onboard the private jet that was comfortably flying high above French airspace, Ocelot let out a chuckle as he turned his head away from the window, "You saw him right? The little brat is dogged as all hell… and he wants them gone as well, even if he doesn't even know it Solidus."

George Sears, or Solidus Snake, sat in his rather comfortable chair, "We don't need him Ocelot. I know his type. If he somehow followed you all the way out here to France then he's single-minded, that is not something I want out of someone to work with me. Naruto Uzumaki is a notorious bleeding heart and will turn against a cause he doesn't understand or believe in."

"Yes…" Ocelot said, "A man like that _is_ rather dangerous." And not for the useful reasons either.

"He's ignorant." Solidus followed up scathingly, "He seems prepared to fight a war with ghosts simply because he knows they exist. He's chasing shadows, and those shadows aren't going to go for too much longer without striking back."

Ocelot let out a grunt of understanding, "So do you want something done about him?" He asked Solidus, "He'll be a real bastard to track down and find if he doesn't want to be seen. He always was even when he was in FOXHOUND. Trying anything might tip him off to you more than now." Operating around Naruto was the most basic, simple thing in the world. If you didn't give him a reason to despise you then he was a damn teddy bear, if you pissed him off or did something to him he would pursue you to the ends of the Earth even if he didn't know the first thing about his target. Just like now.

He was in a dogfight with the Patriots and he never even knew it. He still didn't for the most part.

Solidus spoke up, "We'll leave him be. Every wildcard has its uses. Eventually the Patriots will try something with him and he won't be an issue any longer." In the end the man guessed that he couldn't fault the boy for not knowing more about such a threat. That was the point of the Patriots. No one was supposed to know. They controlled the U.S. from the shadows, using the President and the Pentagon as their figureheads. A grunt like Naruto was never even supposed to get a close as he had to knowing anything about them, "Maybe he'll manage to weaken them a bit before they take him out or pull him under their yoke."

He would eventually fall however. No punk kid could pull something like taking down the Patriots off. Solidus was the President during Naruto's capture. He knew full well of the things that the Patriots had going on during his presidency so that he didn't step on their toes with his own policies and the like. Naruto had already been caught once for examination and experimentation and managed to escape due to pure luck. They wouldn't be so easy to shake off again once they had their claws into him.

This wasn't some David vs. Goliath story. You couldn't just pick a fight with the world. Well, Naruto couldn't. Solidus could because he knew exactly what he had to do. All he needed was time.

XxX

(Two Weeks Later – April 2005 – Limpopo Province of South Africa – Naruto: Age 18)

Naruto and the others had gone down to South Africa so that Sniper Wolf, Johnny, and Meryl could slip back into the portion of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries that Olga had under her command. Naruto had explained everything that had gone down to them before he left them near Olga's base of operations on the Zimbabwe border. Now he just had to explain it to her why the mission had been a flop, hence why he was waiting in a bar in a small border town.

The Gurlukovich Mercenaries were contracted to engage in training exercises with the South African military so there was no big thing going on at the moment in that part of the world. He was very candid over the Codec, wanting her to be in front of witnesses in case she was upset. At the moment he was thinking on how to tell her what happened and how to spin it to make himself look good in the process since she would be there any minute.

Maybe telling her about the brutal fight he had with that Helios guy would help out. Not that he was even sporting the wounds from that battle any longer. Why couldn't the Kyuubi leave him with some scars for evidence every once in a while? It was a gift and a curse.

Thinking to himself, his own personal pondering was cut short by his Codec going off. Naruto touched his hand to his ear as the bar was pretty empty at the moment as he was alone to himself, "Hello?"

"_Naruto Uzumaki?"_ A well read, assertive voice said. It was yet another voice that Naruto didn't recognize. He could understand how Natasha Romanenko got his frequency back when he was in Los Angeles, but how did this random guy get it this time?

"And just who the hell is this?" Naruto said lowly with an edge in his voice, "I don't think I know who you are."

"_You know who I am boy. Everyone knows who I am. I'm _very _important."_

Naruto let out a humorless laugh, "Why don't you just tell me anyway? People that are important to everyone else aren't really that important to me for no good reason."

"_You're speaking to the President of the United States."_ The voice said in a proud manner, _"This is James Johnson. Is your memory refreshed now?"_ What a douche. Either this guy was letting the job go to his head after just a month and a half on the job or he had some serious weight currently held over Naruto's head. With his luck it was the latter.

"Not really." Naruto responded dryly, "You can't refresh something that you never learned in the first place." Take a shot at the very important person and let him know you couldn't care less about his existence. What a great way to make friends, "What do you want?"

"_For you to come back to the states."_

"And I will… eventually. Just not right now. I'm kind of busy."

"_Ocelot is off limits to you."_

How did he know that? No one was supposed to know about that. The only person that could have identified him was Ocelot, and why would he be running back to the President after what he saw and heard in Lyon? Naruto really didn't like this, "How the fuck did you know about that? What do you want?"

"_It's not really what I want in this case, it's what my _partners_ want. And they want you, to work for us. It would be for the best if you just cooperated with us. You're still a reserve in the U.S. Armed Forces. Your discharge never fully went through and we're asking you back."_

"Fuck. You." Naruto growled out, "I don't work for people I don't respect and I don't fight for reasons that I don't care about." This guy obviously wanted him for one of two reasons. To capture him again, which would be redundant, or to get him to fight for him. If it was the latter then he was going to have to 'respectfully' decline, "So good luck finding me to make me work for you. You're going to need it."

If push came to shove and he was really willing to send people after Naruto then he had been prepared for that since Shadow Moses had transpired. He knew what to do and how to disappear.

"_I don't need to find you Naruto, we can find your 'sister' just fine. Catherine Miller correct? Sixteen years old? Resident of Los Angeles, California? Daughter of former special forces drill sergeant 'Master' Kazuhira Miller, also known as McDonell Benedict Miller? I'm sure she could help us find you somehow."_

Part of him wanted to fly off the handle, part of him wanted to just leave and get back to L.A. as fast as he possibly could right then. That would have solved nothing. Was there a possibility that he could run damage control? He was going to find out.

Naruto did not raise his voice. As a matter of fact he spoke in a very pleasant tone, "Alright I know you think you're all safe in that office of yours… behind that desk with all of your well trained guards and whoever you've got pulling strings watching your back, but you need to remember something. You might have friends bigger than you, but while I probably can't find them you're a public figure. I can find you anywhere in the entire world, there's nowhere _you_ can go. If you lay a finger on my little sister, if I even call her and hear her tell me that she feels scared like there's someone that _might_ be watching her I'll ruin your life. I'll ruin your family's life. Don't fuck with me please."

"_Do you know who you're talking to like that?"_

"I'm more afraid of the Pope than I am of you unless you want me to lie to you and say that you could lay a finger on Catherine and get away with it." Naruto remarked glibly, "But you could always just ignore me and capture her anyway. I'll probably play ball for a little bit, until I find out what you did with her, and then I'll either just get her and leave the country altogether or kill your entire family in front of you… depending on what you did to her."

Now that gave President Johnson pause for a moment, _"And you really believe that you can pull this off? You're threatening the most powerful man in the free world."_

"With the sound of your 'partners' you don't seem that free to me." This was a huge gamble, but Naruto's voice never wavered. There was a chance he could pull this off, "And that question you just asked me. Do you think Ocelot could pull it off?" Silence reigned from both of them as Naruto let that settle in Johnson's brain. If he was namedropping Ocelot then that meant that he knew who the man was and what he was capable of. He also knew enough about Naruto to not sleep on what he could do.

"_We won't lay a hand on Catherine Miller…"_ That was what Naruto wanted to hear, _"…Physically. But Naruto, her father's retirement benefits… his pension… all of that could just disappear. And her mother's assets could just disappear. We can leave her with nothing Uzumaki. And there's nothing you can do about that. And then there is the matter of certain events that transpired in the year 1974. A locked file known only to the top as the Peace Walker Incident. What if some of that leaked to the public and the hero and victim of Shadow Moses her father was turned into something else?"_

"You can't do those things." Naruto insisted. He didn't know anything about the Peace Walker stuff, but the money seemed pretty farfetched, "You don't own the banks, you don't have control over Master Miller's assets that he left to Catherine, and you can't do anything with her mom's money either."

"_My business partners can do anything they want. They can alter history. They can leave her penniless Naruto. They can leave her as the destitute daughter of a traitor and a possible terrorist. And I don't ever have to have anyone lay a single hand on her. What will you do then? She'll be all alone with nothing, and killing anyone's family wouldn't fix that."_

Naruto had no idea how to respond to that. Once those things were gone they were gone. Getting at Johnson personally to get those things back wouldn't work. This was different than before, and he didn't know what to say. There was no way to end this other than moving along with it or completely uprooting Catherine's life to make her disappear. When it came to the two options of stepping into line or ruining his beloved pseudo-sister's life before it even began there was only one that he would even consider taking, and he knew it.

So they had him all over again.

And he _still_ didn't know who the hell 'they' even were.

"_Come back home and do your duty son."_ Johnson said as if this were checkmate, _"We'll be expecting you soon in Los Angeles. There's a position that my associates believe you would be absolutely perfect for. I'm sure you'll make the right choice for your loved one."_ And with that the conversation was over.

All that posturing for absolutely nothing. He had just gotten into a pissing contest with the President of the United States and had lost decisively. What the hell was he thinking? He sunk his head into his hands as he lay it down on the table in the bar. What did Solidus call them in Lyon? The Patriots? Well wasn't that just great?

This was the scene that Olga walked in on ten minutes later. She already knew that Naruto had failed his mission and hadn't been that mad about it. There was no way it could be linked back to her which was the most important part, and she knew that Revolver Ocelot would be a tough rundown for anyone period. Contrary to popular belief she was _not_ going to kick his ass. She wasn't some inflexible bitch that endeavored to strike fear into the hearts of others… though it was amusing to hear Sniper Wolf tell her that Naruto was thinking of all the ways she'd try to beat him up once she found out he had failed.

No, all she was there for was to dish information with Naruto and possibly tell him about and pay him for another job she couldn't be caught doing. Nothing big, and he might have jumped at the chance to make some actual money. Despite the botching of the job in Lyon that was pretty much understandable from what she was told by the others Naruto was still a valued hand, even if she could never let her father know that she was working with him.

Instead of a mischievously overblown pleasantly chipper greeting as she had been expecting once she walked inside she had to look for him. Once Olga found him he saw a focused look on his face and a disenchanted body posture from him as she walked over, "Uzumaki. What's the matter?" She asked as she looked around cautiously before sitting down across from him.

Naruto's eyes panned up and locked with hers, almost sending her to a flashback of their brutal fight from years ago with the intensity in them. He sat up ramrod straight in his chair as he stared her down as if they were the only ones in the entire bar, "Olga you and I need to talk. I'm going to have to go back to America for a while."

"Already?" Olga replied with quite a bit of interest in her voice, "You just left barely a month ago and you're going back? How long are you going to be this time?" He never told anyone what he had been doing the last time but everyone just assumed he had finished up any personal business he had and left it at that.

"Honestly?" Naruto asked with a desperate look that needed her to understand that he had to go, "I don't even know how long I'll be gone." The skeptical look on Olga's face got a deep sigh out of him.

This was going to be a long conversation.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter complete everyone. Nothing worthwhile to say on this day, we simply move along. Later folks, I'll hopefully catch you around next time.<strong>

**Kenchi out.**


	16. Damned If You Don't

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Petition your neighbors, call your local government officials. Let's make this thing happen people. Come on everybody, put the power in our hands!

By our hands I really mean _my_ hands, but hey! You can all believe you have the power just so long as it's really with me, and isn't that what's important in the end?

Not really.

**Chapter 16: Damned if You Don't**

* * *

><p>(May 2005 – Los Angeles, California – Naruto: Age 18)<p>

"Aniki!"

Now normally walking outside of Los Angeles International Airport after smuggling a sword through customs, getting off scot free in the process, and finding oneself caught in a hug from a pretty girl you would call yourself very close to would be a good thing.

Not if the reason you were back in Los Angeles in the first place was to assure that said girl had a future. The entire flight from South Africa to L.A. was filled with Naruto thinking about all of the compounded crap that had been hurled at him over the course of the last six months.

His original capture in 2003 had been a product of a branch of the U.S. Military that had been known of by the very top. The 'very top' were more or less puppet figures guided and controlled by these 'Patriots' of whom Naruto could not put a face to and nobody knew about except Liquid Snake, Ocelot, and George Sears a.k.a. Solidus Snake… the first man was dead and he had a snowball's chance in hell of finding the other two again… especially now.

Solidus seemed to want to take the Patriots down, and Naruto was inclined to cheer him on, and Ocelot was… trying to help? He didn't know. Ocelot had too many things going on at once for Naruto to be sure. Luckily he had a friend in Olga to keep him informed if there was a need for it, a friend that wanted to beat him up but then again he had called worse people friends of his. The Patriots or whatever apparently didn't know jack about his working relationship with her, or what he had done to help Sniper Wolf, Johnny, and Meryl. That was good.

And apparently there was some dirt on Master Miller that the Patriots had too. He had no idea what any Peace Walker Incident was all about, but that was something else altogether. Now these Patriots had enough power to do anything they wanted, like ruin the lives of anyone in the world. Like hell he would let that happen to his loved ones. He'd keep them all safe. He just had to know what it was he was keeping them safe from first.

He needed more information.

Therein lied how this little situation could work out for him. He'd play ball… sure. However the entire time he'd be finding out whatever he could from the inside. When the time came he would handle everything. No one controlled him and threatened his little sister.

…Who was currently pulling on his cheek trying to get his attention.

"What's the matter Kitty?" Naruto asked her, just now realizing that they were in a car and she was driving.

Catherine let go of his cheek and kept her eyes ahead of her on the road, "You were doing that weird spacing out thing you do when you think too hard again." She informed him before smirking, "I swear I could hear your brain cooking in your head like bacon."

"Ha ha." Naruto replied as they came to a stop at a light. He then noticed her looking at him intently, "What's up."

"Thank you."

That gave Naruto pause and confused him, "For what? What did I do?" Yeah, he was doing something right now that registered a thank you, but she didn't know that and if he did his job right she never would.

Catherine shook her head giving him a look that said 'you're so silly for not remembering what you did', "I received a book not too long after you left again Aniki. It told me what happened to you. It's supposed to be really famous by now, _In the Darkness of Shadow Moses_. It's running up the bestseller chart." So Natasha sent her the book as he had requested after all, "I don't know how to pin that on you, but I'm sure you're the reason I got it like that."

"You're welcome." Naruto said with a smile before turning to look back out the window as they started to move again. Not looking her way, he found his face mushed up against the window, "What the hell?"

"Stop keeping secrets Aniki." Catherine said as she held a hand on the side of Naruto's face, holding him to the window and driving simultaneously, "You think you're helping by keeping things from me, but you're really not. I'm not a little girl and we aren't like regular kids. You might be way weirder than me but that doesn't mean anything. You could have said something about the freaky guys in the background that run all of these conspiracies…" She stopped talking when Naruto quickly shoved her hand off of his face and turned to glare at her.

He seemed to be staring a hole in her and it was starting to scare her a little bit, "Pull over." Naruto said calmly. Too calmly, "Now."

Now wasn't the time to be belligerent, thus she did as he instructed and found the nearest right turn to park the car in a lot. She turned the car off and turned towards him, trying to match his serious stare with her own, but that was like putting a water balloon up against a hand grenade, "What?" She finally asked, "Why are you staring at me like that?"

Naruto took a few more seconds to stare as if he were trying to get his point across with his eyes, "You want to know about whoever these people are? That's a book Kitty, it doesn't tell you the first thing about any of what's actually happening."

The tone of voice he used made her think he was treating her like a petulant child. Thus she took her keys out of the ignition and dropped them on the floor, "Well we're not going anywhere until you make me understand it."

"Fine." Naruto said lowly, knowing exactly where to start talking, "You know how you came to see me in the hospital after I was wounded in Iraq a few years ago?" Catherine nodded, "Yeah I was wounded in Iraq… four months before then. After that I was taken to some place where this creepy old woman did experiments on me until I broke out. It took a few years but I'm stringing together some of what she did in nightmares, do you want to hear one of them?" He asked in a calmly upset voice, "One of the things I remember is that she tested exactly how tough my body was by shooting me with different sized rounds at different ranges, and testing the splash damage of frag grenades on me from different ranges."

Catherine's eyes widened as she put a hand on him, "Are you serious? How'd they get away with it?"

"What am I going to say? Who am I going to tell it to?" Naruto replied, sitting back in his chair and staring straight ahead, "That's just one thing… and it's not even the worst thing." He felt like kicking the dashboard but he'd probably destroy it if he did, "I have to do what they say now or they'll ruin your life."

"Me?" Catherine said as if it was impossible that any of this would end up touching her, "What is this, a movie? You've got to be kidding, why me?"

Naruto turned a blue eye towards her as his gaze softened significantly, "Because you're the only way that they can get to me in a way that I actually care about." He admitted, though he could have sworn he had made that clear to her beforehand, "The President of the United States is just a figurehead… I found out as much from the last one George Sears."

Catherine looked in the backseat of her car at her own copy of _In the Darkness of Shadow Moses_, "The reason he resigned was out of disgrace for letting all of the information in that book slip. It really doesn't make him and his administration look good at all. Was the Secretary of Defense really going to nuke the base you were in?"

"Yeah, but that's not important right now…" Naruto said, trying to get her back on track, "But Sears probably resigned so that he could run away. That shadowy group I keep telling you about probably marked him for death. And now I'm here to do what they tell me or they'll tear you and your mom's lives apart."

"Damn…" Catherine said, looking down at the floor of her car not knowing what to say, "I'm really a hindrance to you aren't I?"

"You're too cute to be a hindrance." Naruto replied with a grin as he tried to break the tension, but it failed to do so, something that he picked up on as his mood sobered again, "I'm going to find a way out of this you know. I'm going to come up with something, and get them to leave you alone alright? I promise. In the meantime you can't tell people this stuff. The Patriots don't approach you directly because they don't think you know that much so that means that you need to get rid of…" He pointed at the book in the backseat, "…That. Because the published version doesn't have all of the stuff that your book does. Yours is special, it's unedited."

"I figured that too." Catherine said since quite a bit of the language in the book and some of the concepts in the book probably wouldn't get past an actual editor… especially if this whole conspiracy thing actually existed, "So that's what they're called? The Patriots?" The way she sounded so interested in this got Naruto to narrow his eyes at her, "I'll be good, I won't let anyone know about this stuff. Who would I tell, my dumbass high school classmates? What good would that do anyone?"

Naruto pointed at her, "Not even your mom."

Catherine made a zipper motion at her mouth before putting a dry look on her face, "Mom and I don't exactly talk that much anyway Aniki. If you didn't tell me about this stuff when it kind of involves me why would I tell her?"

Naruto let out a sigh of relief and ran a hand through his hair, "Oh man, I didn't know how good that would feel to get off of my chest. I feel way better." He ignored Catherine's giggle as he got serious again, "You need to get some kind of way to reach me anytime on my Codec. No one can observe anything on my channel because it's never been registered anywhere. That way you can talk to me if anything ever goes wrong." Catherine gave him a mock salute, "Please don't do that."

"Okay." She said as she reached onto the floor for her keys, "So why are you in Los Angeles again, I know it wasn't just to see me."

"It actually was." Naruto said as Catherine turned the car back on, "I was told to come here but I wasn't given any other directions. I think they just wanted to show me that they would leave you alone if I followed their directions." He looked towards her as she put the car in reverse and prepared to pull out of her parking spot, "At least for now…"

Every time she saw him Naruto always seemed to be more down than the last time. He wasn't the same bright-eyed kid he was when he had left her dad's home in Alaska to find his own way in the world five years ago. She supposed that it was a part of growing up, but she couldn't remember the last time he just joked around. He was always so serious and tried to force being happy.

"It'll be okay." Catherine told Naruto, trying to sound confident, "Really, all I have to do is keep my head down right? I graduate next year so maybe that will make things easier. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but just don't let anyone use you alright? Not for me."

Naruto looked at her but didn't say a word to her as he set the side of his face on the cool glass of the window, 'I could just run. I could take you with me Kitty. But what kind of life would that be for you? It'd be short and terrible. I'll deal with this somehow, and I'll get both of us free. I promise.'

On the other hand Catherine was thinking something similar, 'No one's going to turn you into their hired killer Aniki. You're not some weapon, and you're not going to turn into one because some dicks too scared to face the world themselves want you to.' The silence between them was hurting her. They had already harmed him once, she despised the fact that it was going to happen again because of her, 'I'll find some way to help you, I swear I will.'

XxX

Naruto was still rather hesitant to head into Catherine's home once he was told that her mother was home, but in this case he didn't have a choice. All he could do was sit on his hands until he was contacted with his new orders. God, he hated thinking about taking orders from that prick in a suit Johnson. He could kill him on national television during the State of the Union address before anyone watching at home knew what happened, and here he was getting rolled on like some kind of chump. Once again he had to say, where was the loyalty? Saving the world really didn't get one much of anything did it?

Was this it? Was this what he had taken all of those bullets, explosions, and asskickings for? Was this what he had taken out all of those threats to the country for? He never even got a goddamn Purple Heart.

All he could do now was relax and wait. Maybe Catherine's mom was the kind to made snide comments and put up with his presence rather than just flat out try to kick him out?

As Catherine opened the front door to her house she froze once she looked inside and saw a strange man sitting on her couch, looking at her with a smile on his face. She didn't enter fully, reaching back with her hand that wasn't visible inside and frantically tapping Naruto to warn him that someone was inside. Outside of the house, Naruto growled and rubbed her back soothingly before he jumped up to the second floor of the house and tried to get in through a window.

With the mindset that Naruto would take care of everything, Catherine slowly stepped inside of the house, "Um… hello." She said in a cheerful manner to cover up what she was feeling at the moment, "I don't want to be rude, but could I ask you who you are and what you're doing in my house?"

"I'd like to know that too."

The man sitting in the couch looking directly at Catherine was a well-built African American wearing a high-ranking military suit, and he was strangely unafraid or even unaffected once he heard Naruto's voice suddenly appear behind him, a strong grip resting on his shoulder from said young man.

"Amazing…" The man on the couch said, letting out a few laughs. They weren't mocking like the man was patronizing Naruto's little display, he seemed legitimately impressed, "I should have known you were somewhere since my orders said that my new recruit would be landing today and coming to this address, but when the girl came in and I didn't catch hide nor hair of you, even when you were right behind me. You're going to fit in just fine Naruto Uzumaki."

Hearing the man talking, from the kitchen Catherine's mother walked in and she wasn't that surprised to see Naruto in her house, "Hello Catherine. And you must be Naruto." She said to the young blonde, having never met him before in person, "I've heard a lot about you for years. What I've heard varies though…"

Naruto turned around towards Catherine's mother and blinked in confusion before sputtering and offering a hand, "Ah, um nice to meet you ma'am. I won't bother you for very long before I leave again."

"Oh don't worry about that, I know." Catherine's mother said, seemingly not mad with his presence, "Colonel Jackson here said that he was simply here to retrieve you for your next assignment. This was the only working address that anyone could use to find you after Catherine's father… well, you know."

At that, the Navy man stood up to Naruto and extended his hand for him to shake, "As the lady just said, I am Colonel Jackson. Now that your leave of absence is up you've been reassigned to me and my group. It should be quite interesting for the last remnant of FOXHOUND to be a member of my unit."

'Leave of absence? Bullshit.' Naruto and Catherine both thought simultaneously. Due to Naruto's last visit Catherine knew full well that Naruto didn't apply for any leave of absence, he just flat out said 'fuck it' and left. He hadn't planned on coming back to the armed forces, at least not in a formal manner. This really did mean that there had been some longer term plans for him high up the food chain.

"It's time to get a move on so we can get you briefed Uzumaki." Jackson said, and that was Naruto's cue that it was time to go. No rest for the wicked apparently because they wanted him ready to roll immediately with whatever he was supposed to do.

Naruto nodded and turned towards Catherine's mother, "Sorry about the trouble."

She simply waved it off, "It was no trouble at all. Where else were you supposed to go for them to contact you?"

"Right…" Naruto said before he began to walk to the door followed by Colonel Jackson. Once he got outside and took his luggage from Catherine's car he turned around and saw Catherine coming towards him to give him a hug. He let her do so and returned it vigorously as he whispered in her ear barely loud enough for her to hear, "Remember this frequency for when you get some way to contact me over a distance alright? 141.92. Make sure you remember that and I'll talk to you soon."

"Be careful." Catherine told him before giving him a kiss on the cheek. They both broke apart and Naruto began to follow Jackson down the street. As they disappeared out of her range of sight she let out a sigh, "God I hate being so useless…"

XxX

Naruto and Jackson walked for well over a mile or so until they wound up in a nearby park. Not very surprisingly this was where their transport was located. The entire park was off-limits until they returned as there was a military-grade helicopter there for transport to wherever. Not a word was shared between them as they both climbed aboard with the other soldiers there to guard the vehicle.

Even as it took off and left the area altogether nothing was said until Jackson broke the silence, "So you were put with me and my unit like I said. Whether you know it or not these orders came right from the top."

"By top you mean the President right?" Naruto replied in a half-sarcastic manner. Little did he expect for the smirk to break out on Jackson's face, 'No way. This guy knows about them too?'

Jackson just chuckled and shook his head, "If that's as high as you can think of then sure, let's go with that." He said cryptically for the fact that the others on the helicopter sure weren't privy to the existence of a higher power in the chain of command, "Either way you're with me now. I've been told that you are an exceptionally talented counter-terrorism operative. That's good. Like I said, you're going to fit in just fine."

For some reason this reminded Naruto a lot of his recruitment into FOXHOUND only no one was trying to kill him as a test… yet. Even so, he had a few small weapons on him just in case.

"So this unit…" Naruto said as he tensed his hands in his lap, "I really don't think you're going to have me stomping around in the desert in Iraq again are you?"

Jackson just gave him a deadpan look, "Don't be stupid kid. Do you really think they would have yanked you from God knows where and threw you in with me if that was all they wanted out of you? No, you're better than that. You're better and now the majority of the world knows it after that book about Shadow Moses came out. I also know that you'd rather drive splints into your own fingernails than do this, so for what it's worth you know what's keeping you here. Welcome to Dead Cell."

XxX

(300 Miles off of the Pacific Coast – Hours Later)

After looking at nothing but ocean for who knew how long, they eventually came upon an aircraft carrier that appeared to be their destination.

Stepping off of the helicopter, Naruto immediately fell in step with Jackson. This man knew something about the Patriots, so who else in this 'Dead Cell' did? He ignored the bustling of the enlisted men on the ship, they weren't his concern and they wouldn't bother him if he didn't bother them. For better or worse he was back in now and he needed to find another way out for sure this time, for good. He'd just wait for his chance. It would come to him soon enough, and were that the case he'd be out of there like no one's business.

Jackson began to speak to Naruto as they made their way through the interior of the carrier, "Don't worry about not knowing your way around, you'll get how to move around soon. Now, Dead Cell is a small, special anti-terrorist unit established during the last presidency. We're technically an arm of the Navy SEALs, meant to carry out surprise attacks on ally bases so that we can keep our allies and our own forces prepared for terrorist attacks."

'What the fuck?' Naruto thought to himself once he heard that. He quickly pieced together the gist of what he had just been told, "So we're pretty much going to be acting like terrorists and doing terrorist stuff… so that the rest of the armed forces are prepared for terrorists and terrorist stuff." It sounded like a useful idea… but he was having a hard time thinking of how exactly that was going to work.

"That's pretty much it." Jackson said with a smirk at hearing how Naruto basically dumbed it down to basics, "Remember this though; even though we're supposed to be an arm of the SEALs we only take our orders from the President himself." His tone then turned somewhat acidic, "Even though this new President doesn't know his own head from his ass, much less how we were meant to be used."

'I think I sense a little rift in the solid united front here…' Naruto thought to himself as he nodded like he was listening intently. This could be something he could use down the line. At this point in time he couldn't rule anything out that might be useful to him. He needed that brain of his to start working harder than he had ever forced it to in his entire 18 years of life, "So we only move and go on missions that we're specifically told to do? Sounds like FOXHOUND…" He finished in a mumble.

"Then you'll be used to the routine." Jackson asserted.

'Damn right I am. And if it's like that then I have plenty of time to make my moves.' Even if Naruto worked regularly the way he _didn't_ in FOXHOUND, going on a_ctual_ missions, he would still have plenty of time to think… and train… and get things together. He had nothing but time. And now he had a bonafide reason to step up other than just going with the flow the way he had prior to the events on Shadow Moses Island. It was time to disrupt the flow altogether.

Jackson led him into a lounge-like part of the ship that seemed vacant except for a handful of people, "Are you ready to meet the rest of the team?" As they walked into the room he pointed at an old man with countless wrinkles on his face. He had grey hair and a receding hairline with the hair he had in a slicked back style. He wore a brown trench coat with a German iron cross emblazoned on the back. He simply sat playing three separate games of solitaire, not bothering to acknowledge Jackson of Naruto's presence in the room, "This is Old Boy."

"Old Boy?" Naruto replied incredulously. That was a codename for someone in this group? He really didn't like that and for once he was really hoping that he didn't get codename like he repeatedly wished when he was in FOXHOUND, "So… who is he?"

Jackson launched into an explanation of sorts, "Old Boy is the single oldest soldier walking the face of the planet. He was born in the early 1900's, no one knows exactly when. We do know that he was recorded fighting in World War II, apparently they called him that back then as he was old even in the 1940's by the point of view of a soldier. He was legendary to the Wehrmacht."

Naruto cringed at that information, "So he was a Nazi?"

Old Boy heard Naruto and scoffed, "Don't lump me in with those ignorant bigots brat." He said in a thick German accent.

Jackson shook his head at how Naruto was getting along after just thirty seconds in the room, "After the war he bounced around, training multiple fighting forces around the world until he found his way to us. He specializes in the use of older models of weaponry, basically the German armament from World War II. The technological advances never seemed to matter to him in battle, and they never detracted from his effectiveness."

"That's actually kind of cool." Naruto openly admitted. So skill really did matter to some people after all instead of just keeping up with the newest versions of everything. This guy was the definition of old-school.

"Another thing." Jackson said as if he forgot to mention something, "Due to Old Boy's… advanced age… he has his own special unit of soldiers called the Fallschirmjäger. They don't take orders from anyone other than him, and most of them are pretty hot tempered. You'll know them when you see them around. He drills them hard, and they all wear heavy body armor with an iron cross on their gear."

'Crotchety old guy with old guns that has his own bodyguards to make up for him being so old. Good to know.' Naruto thought as he gave the old German soldier a nod of acknowledgement, 'I'll never make a crack about Ocelot being old again.'

With Old Boy introduced, Jackson pointed to the corner of the room where there was a shirtless Asian man with his trench coat wrapped around his waist by the sleeves sitting on the ground meditating as they walked over towards him. He had long black hair pulled back into a single braid with a Fu Manchu mustache. On his face and trailing all the way down his neck and torso was a single tattoo of a dragon. He opened one eye and looked at Naruto before shutting his eyes with a sneer, "Jap." He remarked at Naruto insultingly before pretending that he didn't even exist.

"What was that?" Naruto replied in a bristly manner before Jackson set a hand on his shoulder and led him away, "What the fuck is his problem?" Meditating or not, Naruto was about to kick that asshole's face in.

"That's Chinaman." Colonel Jackson said with a deep exhale. Naruto was two-for-two with rocky starts with his new squad members… and it wasn't even his fault actually. Tough luck for the new guy it seemed, "He's actually Vietnamese but he was kidnapped and sold to an American family in New York from a black market adoption agency. He hated his family and the people around him that discriminated against him, it was just after the Vietnam War ended in America when they brought him over at age 5, and he eventually ran away to New York's Chinatown to live until he grew up and joined the Navy SEALs. He claims he's Chinese at heart and hates Americans and New York especially… and he inherited a strong dislike for Japanese. We all read your background and he saw where you were supposed to be from."

Naruto nodded and spoke, having had time to calm down and get away from Chinaman, "So what can he do?"

That question put a smile on Jackson's face, "He's our close-quarters battle specialist and resident mystic and effects specialist. He's actually got a few skills that you'd be interested in." Seeing the inquisitive look on Naruto's face he continued, "His time in the SEALs marked him as a specialist swimmer, but his real skills are the things he picked up in the back alleys of Chinatown. In addition to mastery of all sorts of kung fu; both northern and southern styles, and styles that require external and internal mastery, he also specializes in chi kung."

Naruto just gave Jackson a deadpan stare, "You said that like I'm supposed to know what it is."

"It's a special sort of art that uses qi, or chi. According to your own rundown of your abilities you call it the use of 'chakra'. Either way it's supposed to be one's internal spiritual energy." Now that got Naruto's attention. There was someone that could actually use actual factual special powers? What could he do? Jackson could see that he was one interested blonde, "Yeah, he can walk on water, stand on ceilings… also things that you've been recorded doing. He can also survive underwater far longer than any human can. Those are just a few things he can do."

'And my cloud now has at least one silver lining…' Naruto thought to himself. In this world he had no one to teach him any new ninjutsu and no one had taught him how to make them himself outside of just innovating what he already had, so he had to find ways to use his existing two techniques Rasengan and Kage Bunshin in the best way he had known how; in combination and in special formations.

If there was a chance that this guy could turn him on to how to better form his own techniques then he'd take all of the inappropriate and misinformed mistaken racial slurs that Chinaman could hit him with… until he knew enough that he didn't need Chinaman anymore and could kick his face in for one of them as payback sometime down the line. Until then he'd just keep insisting that he wasn't Japanese for all the good he was certain that _wouldn't_ do.

Next up, Jackson led Naruto to a large, plump bald man wearing a bomb blast suit, a trench coat over it, and… were those rollerskates on his feet? If that weren't strange enough, the man was currently giving himself a manicure. He had hands as smooth as a woman's… it was pretty weird if Naruto had to say anything about it.

"This is Fatman." Hearing that, and going off of the last two names he had heard, Naruto definitely wasn't looking forward to his own codename. The man turned to Naruto and gave him a mad looking grin before returning to his hands, "He's the explosives expert of Dead Cell. A genius of bombs and the premier bomb maker in the world, he built an atomic bomb when he was ten years old."

Naruto did a double-take back towards Fatman, "What the hell?" Who did stuff like that?

The reaction of the new recruit only served to elicit deep belly-laughter from Fatman, "You expected anything less from me?" He asked Naruto as if Naruto knew who he was prior to meeting him, an impossibility in this instance, "I'm the 'Emperor of Explosives'. Something like that would be like a children's project for me now."

"And that just leaves one person for you to meet on the team." Jackson said, now a decent distance away from Naruto, having moved during Fatman's little monologue.

Instead of considering why he had walked away from him, Naruto quickly ejected a kunai from his sleeve into his hand fast enough to turn and block a throwing knife sent his way from a blindspot. Not bothering or caring why this was happening, Naruto was prepared when he caught sight of a man dropping down from the darkened top of the room, attempting to stab him.

Naruto blocked with his knife as they clashed blades. His attacker was a tall, pale man with long dark hair and a goatee wearing a trench coat open, yet tied closed at the belt. He wore brown pants, black full gloves and in addition to the knife he was already attacking Naruto with he had another large knife in his other hand.

A swipe of the second knife from the man forced Naruto to lean back to avoid it, however he retaliated with a surprise attack of his own, spitting a small throwing knife from its place that he kept it in his mouth inside his cheek against his teeth. The man moved his head to try and avoid the projectile, but that wasn't the real attack. He didn't avoid a stiff and straight front kick to the face that sent him hurtling across the room over a table.

"Vamp stop."

Jackson uttered this just as the man that had picked himself up and Naruto had bent his legs to prepare to go in for the kill with a leap and a follow-up Rasengan.

He put a hand on Naruto's shoulder to get him to calm down, but that sort of had the opposite effect as the young man turned to him with angry eyes, "I'm too old to be dealing with this hazing crap. If anyone tries that again I'm cutting something off, ripping something off, or throwing someone overboard… Patriots be damned…" He muttered the last part under his breath as he turned to leave the room.

The man that had attacked Naruto stood crouched down on the table until Naruto left and rubbed at some blood trailing down his neck that came from the knife that Naruto had spat at him. He stared at the tiny blade covered in his own blood despite the lack of visible wounds on his person, "I believe he'll be a fantastic fit Colonel…" Vamp said in a calm Romanian accent before he sat down on the table he had been standing on, seemingly completely unharmed from what should have been a fatal injury or at the very least one that caused panic.

XxX

Jackson walked outside the room and found Naruto leaning against the wall with a thousand-yard stare, just tapping his foot silently on the floor, 'I really didn't feel him there at all.' He thought before addressing Naruto, "You didn't go far. That's good." He motioned for Naruto to follow him, "Come with me, I'll take you to your quarters."

"I have quarters?" Naruto said in a skeptical tone of voice. He didn't get his own room in FOXHOUND until right before they tried to kill him at Shadow Moses.

Jackson gave a stiff nod as he motioned for the young man to follow him, "This entire part of the carrier is ours. You've got the last bit of personal space we've been provided though." It had been clear from the outset that Naruto was less than thrilled with his current predicament and was only here because he had to be. That was more than understandable given the circumstances that Jackson was privy to, "I'm your commanding officer but I'm not a tyrant and I'm not out to get you. Either way you're a member of my unit now Uzumaki and I expect you'll know what to do and how to work."

"Oh I know how to work." Naruto said, shoving his hands in his pockets as he followed Jackson through the carrier, "So just let me know what I'm working with here. What do I need to know other than that my team is full of psychopaths and jerks?" He used to think he was weird, then he came here and now he felt way more normal.

It was weird because he didn't know why, but for someone that neither sought the unit out nor was given to offer to join from the leader himself, Jackson thought that he could grow to like Naruto… but with the way he wound up with Dead Cell he would always have to keep an eye on him, "You'll be getting paid, you'll get leave, you're just like any other member of a special unit with full benefits." Telling him about the perks might lighten the kid up, "You have free reign of the armory. If there's something you want or need then you can procure it for yourself. If there's something you want that we don't have then we can try to get it. No one's going to tie your hands in the field here, we need you in one piece."

That certainly made sense. If these guys were meant to kill him then it would have happened by now. The helicopter ride over nothing but open ocean with armed escorts, the room full of weird Dead Cell members, the fight he had with one of the weird Dead Cell members that Naruto swore he had killed or at least wounded badly with his counterattack… yeah there had certainly been more than enough chances to take him out inconspicuously over the last few hours.

So for now he was definitely meant to sit down, smile, shut the fuck up, and take his orders. And despite knowing of the Patriots and why he was there, Jackson didn't seem to be in with them, he was just an agent at best. The lack of threats however made Naruto think that he was just getting tossed down orders from higher up the ladder and had to stomach them like a good soldier.

"This is all yours." Jackson said, pointing to the door of an open room. It was very small, not that Naruto expected any better or even cared about the size of the room. Big rooms were for common barracks and he sure as hell didn't need the room for anything other than sleeping so there was no need for lots of space. One twin-sized bed sat in a corner with a desk barely three feet from it against the wall. A footlocker sat at the foot of the bed with no lock; Naruto assumed he would have to provide his own lock… or booby trap it. Probably both.

Naruto simply dropped his luggage in the little bit of space provided and sat down on his bed before looking up at Jackson, "I'm only doing this for my little sister. You met her. If it wasn't for her then I would have just run away."

Jackson nodded and turned to leave Naruto to himself in the room, "Well either way you're my responsibility now. We work for the President which means _they'll_ know how to reach you too. When they want you to do something you'll know it because you'll be going alone. Other than that I'm in charge so feel free to bring any concern to me, and try not to kill any of the others. You're Dead Cell now kid."

As Jackson left Naruto alone he allowed himself to lay back on his bed and take just a moment to relax, because he wouldn't give himself the chance to do it again until he was satisfied. He hadn't really had the time or reason to properly train other than to maintain what he could already do since he had already been ahead of anything he had been conditioned to face. Now he had to improve for a beneficial reason, to get himself completely free.

And that was probably going to take a while.

XxX

(One Month Later – June 2005 – U.S.S. Wilderness – Naruto: Age 18)

Dead Cell had yet to be dispatched on any missions as a whole. Again, much like with FOXHOUND, members would either be sent in solo or in teams of two. Colonel Jackson himself readily admitted that he was rarely dispatched due to his status as leader of the unit, and that he did not possess any particular special skills or weird abilities like the rest of the members.

Someone had to run the madhouse though, and you couldn't have an inmate run the asylum… and Dead Cell had nothing but inmates. None of them Naruto would trust in a place of actual authority.

Fatman was a narcissistic madman obsessed with anything relating to time, his hands, or explosives, and on the rollerskates he was a mobile douchebag that never really had anything nice or productive to say. He did warm up to Naruto a bit when Naruto told him about explosive tags. The man got a good laugh out of the concept to say the very least, thinking that it was all a fabricated fairy tale or one hell of a joke. Since Naruto had been unable to replicate the tags he was unable to prove they were real.

Chinaman was a prick to Americans, and his hatred of Japanese more or less doubled up on Naruto, who was supposed to be a Japanese immigrant raised in America, and since Naruto looked American that just made it worse. It was like Naruto was a confusing contradiction to him, and anything confusing was kind of scary and anger inducing. However Naruto was able to get him to tell him things by just asking him repeatedly. His short temper led to him shouting obscenely at Naruto sooner or later, and with his profanity laded words he would usually tell Naruto whatever information he wanted in an effort to just get him the hell away.

Only maybe Vamp and possibly Old Boy would be possible leader choices, but that was stretching it since the old German soldier seemed to have more than a few screws loose. He was always dispatched alone due to the fact that he had his own unit to have his back, and he was far from pleasant. Still he would leave Naruto alone if Naruto left him alone and that was just fine with the blonde.

On the other hand Vamp was just weird. Really weird. He didn't seem to care too extensively about anything really, and he readily joked often about his own death. His movements were completely strange in the middle of combat, very much like a dancer that fought with knives of all sizes, it was actually sort of impressive. Much like Chinaman he could stand on walls and run on water. His aim with throwing knives was comparable to Naruto's own, and he seemed to exclusively use nothing more than blades in combat. But Naruto could take solace in the fact that everything Vamp could do, he could do better.

Vamp was faster than any normal person could ever be, Naruto was even faster and kicked himself into high gear to get faster than even that. Full-on sprints up and down the length of the deck, usually while carrying or dragging something absurdly cumbersome. He figured it was time to take advantage of his own body and break it in order to improve it. Taking a page out of his old friend Rock Lee's book to work his ass off from dawn until past dusk.

Vamp was stronger than any normal human being. Naruto's strength without the Kyuubi was steadily beginning to push past powerlifter status with his steady abuse of the weights available on the carrier. It was far easier to get stronger than he thought in this world, having never been to a gym with free weights.

The only thing Vamp could for sure do that was better than Naruto was heal from injuries. How, Naruto did not know and Vamp was not willing to tell, merely smirking and laughing to himself whenever it was brought up, but the fact remained that he simply could. Eventually Naruto was told that his knife managed to puncture Vamp's jugular and yet he didn't bleed out or even register the wound after less than a minute after being kicked over the table out of Naruto's sight, so he never even saw what happened.

Before he could even begin to try and figure out anything more about the Patriots he had to better himself.

Which was why he was currently sitting on his bed in a meditative position. Vulcan Raven taught him how to do it, forced him to do it, and made him realize that he could actually do something once he actually reached a trance. Chinaman made him realize that it was actually useful.

All he had to do was come to terms with something first. Something that was the main reason he refrained from ever meditating again in the first place. But keeping a limiter on himself, _any part of himself_, was most certainly not the way to free himself and return to his regularly scheduled life.

Inside of his own head he found himself wandering the sewers that he only found himself seeing when he was in dire straits, and the one time he attempted to fully meditate with Vulcan Raven in January.

He walked through the ankle-high water, knowing where to go due to the ever-growing malevolent feeling in his heart as he kept moving. Eventually he found himself in an open room face-to-face with the bars that housed his inner demon, "So Kyuubi… I guess it's time to talk."

Silence.

No taunting. No sarcastic greeting or patronizing tone of booming voice. Just silence.

"**Are you done trying to be a hero?"** The Kyuubi finally said in a condescending manner after what seemed to be an hour of just standing there staring into the dark. It opened its eyes lazily and revealed its sharp white teeth, **"I told you things weren't what they seemed. And here you find yourself in a rather spectacular mess after five years of doing nothing useful. Now you finally want me to flex my tails eh?"**

Naruto could have said that it wasn't like that. He could have tried that bullshit approach, but from the look on the Kyuubi's face it was clear that it was well aware of the situation. His only excuse of trying to remain anonymous on the lower end of the totem pole would hold no water since it was clear his abilities were known by the wrong people for the last two years. He had already subconsciously pulled quite a bit of power from the Kyuubi during his battle with Helios as well.

"I don't want you to flex anything fox." Naruto said out loud after a moment of thinking how to approach the conversation, "I just came to say you were right… two years ago you were right. It wasn't over then, it isn't over now, it's not going to be over anytime soon. But it's not as easy as you think it is."

"**Of course it is."** The Kyuubi insisted, **"Simply head to where your enemies are and allow me my freedom. I'll take care of the rest, I guarantee it."**

"That's a great idea." Naruto said sarcastically with a roll of his eyes, "Except I don't know where my enemies are. The real ones that I want aren't anywhere I can locate right now and the President is a nobody in all of this. A replaceable loser, he's not like a kage." Most definitely not like a kage at all. He felt no loyalty to those in control and would just as soon leave them to burn at the first opportunity, without question, "If I was even insane enough to try that then all I would do was destroy millions of people for absolutely nothing. Power isn't going to win this fight… but it sure wouldn't hurt."

"**Believe it or not I couldn't possibly give you anymore chakra than when you were trapped in that laboratory."**

"What?" Naruto exclaimed in disbelief, "But you're the Kyuubi no Yoko! You can flatten mountains, raise tsunamis! All of that crap!"

"**And if I could do all of that while I'm in here then how do you think some flimsy, rusty bars in your weak little mind can hold me back?"** The Kyuubi asked rhetorically, **"Your damn Hokage's seal keeps me from filtering more chakra to you!"** The beast roared at Naruto in anger. Why couldn't he have learned something about fuuinjutsu prior to ending up in this world, **"Do you know how long it took to give you even three tails worth of my power while you were bolted to that table?"** It took a combined effort of crushing despair and desperation due to his situation, pain, and pure unadulterated hatred as well as time to generate three tails of chakra for Naruto in that lab.

There was nothing that could be done about that except for Naruto taking the seal off of the door, but all that would do would release the Kyuubi. Naruto already knew that was what would occur in such an instance so there was no use in trying to trick him into doing so.

"**I've tried to give you more."** Continued the Kyuubi in explanation, **"I intended for you to obliterate that Metal Gear creation four months ago with the fullest scope of my power that you could muster. And even a matter of weeks ago you could only receive two tails in the time provided for me before you calmed yourself."** Attempts to force more power into Naruto to intoxicate him only failed. Damn Yondaime Hokage.

"Okay… I can work with what you gave me though…" Naruto said calmly. When he was fighting Helios he had a lucid balance of anger charged power and focus. It was perfect. He needed to harness that. It made his body go numb though when he used the chakra to boost his performance, but for something to only be used for critical times it was perfect.

His words brought a scoff from the Kyuubi, **"You had better."** Its power was not ammunition for a weapon, it was absolute. There was no 'working with it', there was finding a target and making a victim once Naruto tapped into the Kyuubi's chakra, **"And you had better find a way to free yourself from the accursed cowards that won't even face you to bind you to their will. I will not be the prisoner of a slave."**

"And you won't be." Naruto assured the Kyuubi as he faded from the sewer of his mind, "Just give me some time."

A grin came over the demon's face as Naruto disappeared. It could sense the hatred in its container's heart as it referenced the figures that tried to reign over Naruto as if it was their right to do so. That was good. Hate was good.

XxX

(May 2006 – Tokyo, Japan – Naruto: Age 19)

In the private office of a high-end biotechnology company a door swung open as a smartly dressed man in a suit stomped through the doorway, leaving his several bodyguards at the door, a grim look on his face. Marching through the dark office he eventually finds his way to a computer that is turned on with a notice of having just finished uploading something on the screen.

That was not good.

A notice that something was happening in the office hadn't even gone out until the computer was accessed. The man in the suit was merely going to attempt to access his work from his cell phone when he got the alert that there was someone already working on his computer at the office. That was simply impossible, thus he immediately returned to check what was happening.

He hurriedly buzzed through the computer's memory to check for his work and upon clicking on the first file of importance in order to bring it up his face twisted in horror.

Instead of pages and pages of data on the newest nanotechnological breakthroughs meant to be sent out to the highest bidding national army once testing was complete he got a full-screen playing of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".

His resulting yell of horror and anguish caused his bodyguards to storm into the room, pistols drawn to deal with whatever threat would have caused the man to yell only to find him pulling his own hair out and cursing at shadows.

The sound of stifled laughter filled their ears and they began to search the office for the source, however a puff of smoke from an upper corner of the nearly pitch black office was all they could find out of order.

XxX

Early evening was always a good time to hit places like this. The day was winding down for most people and that sort of atmosphere put guards at ease, so at ease that it was easy for Naruto to sneak a clone in to upload all of the good data he could find straight to the Pentagon.

The company would eventually get their data back… after it was obsolete. But then again that wasn't Naruto's problem. The Patriots gave him a mission and that was that was that.

Breakthroughs had been made by this company. These new nanomachines were supposed to be able to remotely hack into terminals not prepared for that sort of technology, which at this point in time none were, they could remotely check vital signs and the health of the users, they could assist in communication without even speaking between users of the same generation of nanomachines. They could even help in the healing of wounds, forcing them to coagulate and speed the healing process.

The sticking point that made him 100% alright with taking this mission in the first place was because Naruto had been briefed that the last particular facet of the new nanomachines were based off of the data that Dr. Clark had taken from her research on him in 2003. It was first thought to be a failed attempt of hers to redo Naruto's healing factor, but it was scrapped since only surface wounds could be properly healed that way, not skeletal injuries or things like concussions, things that Naruto's original healing ability could shrug off. That was exclusive to him.

Well even without the bones healing and the other forms of damage control that Naruto's healing factor handled for him that was all this company really needed to consider something like the speedy wound treatment a breakthrough, thus they imparted that aspect into their nanomachines. The resulting buzz from their announcement of such was enormous.

There were other things as well, but those were the major improvements over the simpler nanomachines from the past that could only supply and administer sugars, adrenaline, things of that nature, as well as restrict certain movements of the recipients like firing weapons in undesirable locations by their control team.

And now Naruto had stolen the data on them and left the company with a full terabyte of a virus that would spam "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley in its place, no matter what they tried to pull up on any computer in the facility. They weren't even able to communicate around the building or outside of it due to the virus.

It was a fantastic field test run for his new experimental use of Kage Bunshin. While in deep meditation he would use his mental lock on a single clone and use it as if it were his own body. It kind of reminded him of Ino Yamanaka's clan jutsu since his body was left alone until the clone was dispelled or Naruto simply dropped control.

So now sitting in a rather comfortable chair in the lobby of the building as he came back into his own body, Naruto, clad in a brown trench coat and a pair of sunglasses, stood up still laughing to himself as he headed towards the elevator. It was time to get out of there.

Naruto immediately punched in the top floor that the elevator could go to and waited. As the elevator ascended the building, Naruto put a smirk on his face and started singing to himself for self-entertainment, "We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I." The elevator hit the top floor and opened up at that moment, "A full commitment's what I'm thinking of. You wouldn't get this from any other guy…"

He wound up staring at a hallway buzzing with men in black suits running around with their guns drawn, and they noticed the elevator door open with Naruto inside. The boy didn't even stop singing as they all caught on since he was singing the virus song and was most certainly not supposed to be on that floor.

Naruto just drew his HF Blade from his back as it was hidden inside of his trench coat, "I… just want to tell you how I'm feeling. Gotta make you understand." A few shots were fired at him from some jumpy guards and in a show of speed and agility Naruto blocked every bullet sent his way with the HF Blade, grinning all the while until he finally decided to rush forward into the hall.

"Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you." The men didn't know what to make of Naruto seemingly making their bullets useless with nothing more than his sword, and it wasn't like he was killing them either. The sword never touched them, he would just dance through their bullets until he got close enough to smash them with the hilt or kick the hell out of them, sending them into the walls hard enough to crack them, "Never gonna make you cry. Never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you."

By the time he finished with the first verse he had beaten his way through the entire hall and had defeated all of the guards without a mark on him, his voice never changing pitch in the slightest as he walked into the stairwell at the end of the hall to head up to the roof.

Having his clones shoot at him with blanks until he could block the shots was the greatest idea he had ever come up with. Eat your heart out Gray Fox.

As he reached the roof, the grin still had yet to leave his face as he could see the helicopter that the man in the office freaking out had used to hurry back to the office. Still singing, five more guards around the helicopter saw him and began to fire, thus beginning Naruto's dance with his sword once more, "We've known each other for so long. Your heart's been aching but you're too shy to say it. Inside we both know what's been going on. We know the game and we're gonna play it." By now they had fired all of their rounds and were for all intents and purposes useless as Naruto ran towards them faster than anything they had ever seen move.

He tapped into the absolute bare minimum of the Kyuubi's chakra and channeled it into his own killing intent, paralyzing the roof guards with fear as he dragged his HF Blade on the ground, the sound of the metal scraping against the roof doing nothing for their fright along with his red eyes from the chakra. The closer Naruto got, the worse the sensation became, and they knew by now that bullets wouldn't work on him, "And… if you ask me how I'm feeling. Don't tell me you're too blind to see."

In a matter of seconds by the time he had reached the helicopter itself the guards were passed out from their own fear. Only the most confident warriors could shrug off Naruto's killing intent. A bunch of bonafide security guards were not even close to that level.

Humming the chorus to himself, Naruto got the helicopter started and flew it away off of the roof of the building. After he was certain that he had put more than enough distance away from the building he put his hand to his ear, "Colonel Jackson I finished my mission."

It took a moment for someone to respond, but after a moment Jackson's voice answered on his own Codec implant, _"That was fast. You were only gone for two days this time."_

"I didn't have to cross an entire ocean or continent this time either." Naruto said as he continued to pilot the helicopter, "You guys dropped me off near Australia. How long did you think I'd take?" He said as he wiped the makeup from his cheeks, exposing his whisker-marks.

"_Longer than two days. Goddamn you Rapture. I swear you're more trouble than you're worth most of the time."_ Jackson responded with a grumble, _"Your cover story to the rest of the unit you're your extra mission says that you're supposed to be gone for the rest of the week testing the Japan Self-Defense Forces with a fake-attack. You can't just show up a third of the week early. Keep your ass in Japan, we'll come to you."_ He swore that Naruto made his job harder on purpose.

"Fine…" Naruto said with a roll of his eyes, not that Jackson could see it, "I was just telling you that I knocked out my main mission for the you-know-who. I haven't even done the test-attack on anything in Japan yet. Just watch the news, you'll know when I do it. It has to be something big enough to get attention." He let out an indignant sniff, "I'm heading to Sapporo right now so keep your pants on damn it." Maybe he'd just half-ass it and terrorize the Hokkaidou governor and be done with it.

"_Just don't kill any civilians Rapture. You know the drill."_

Naruto's codename in Dead Cell was designated 'Rapture' due to the fact that he never seemed happy when on any sort of base or on the aircraft carrier. It was once he was in the field that he turned all smiles, joking even while he was being shot at. And unlike the other members of Dead Cell when they were told to keep casualties to a minimum during their test attacks Naruto actually took that to full heart, keeping from killing anyone at all, even active soldiers even though the tests were meant to be real. Another reason for his codename was that he always seemed to be just waiting on something, just waiting, as if he was preparing thoroughly for something inevitable to occur with his constant training and his development of his special abilities, even picking up more conventional skills.

"I never kill anyone unless it's one of my special missions." Naruto remarked off-handedly. The ultimate no-no in Dead Cell and possibly the only concrete modus operandi of the unit was that they could not harm civilians whatsoever in their assaults or whatever they were to be doing, "I'll check back in later. Enjoy dealing with the others Colonel." He finished on a bright note.

"_The less of you all around the easier you all are to deal with."_ Jackson quipped, _"Even though you're the only one gone it's like a load off my mind to not have to look after all of you at once."_ Colonel Jackson was more or less the den mother to a nest of lunatics and Naruto was laughably the sanest of them all. How a normal guy like Jackson could keep them all in line was beyond him. He was basically their handler, and for someone that high ranked that didn't have any special abilities he got them to move along quite well, _"Don't get yourself killed or captured."_ After six months Naruto, by way of espionage with his clones, could say that he wasn't a Patriot stooge, nor were any of his comrades. Dead Cell was just an easy way for them to keep an eye on him.

"Duh." Naruto said before turning the Codec off and thinking about how he was going to construct his little 'attack'. A grin came to his face as he thought of how he'd handle things, "You know, I think there are some people that haven't seen me in person in a while." He said to himself before letting out a good natured sigh, "Either Wolf or Meryl are going to kick my ass when they see me again…"

* * *

><p><span>Omake: Trial By Fire<span>

(September 2005 – U.S.S. Wilderness – Naruto: Age 18)

Naruto stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier brandishing his HF Blade. It didn't take much convincing of Colonel Jackson to allow Naruto to go collect his equipment, set up at a dead drop he had gotten together with the help of his friends. He hadn't seen them in person in months, but he stayed in contact with them via Codec in secret whenever possible since one was unable to hack into his Codec conversations and listen. His Codec was never registered as it had been the original prototype model so it was untraceable.

Even Catherine had managed to find a way to call him on his Codec and talk to him just like he had told her to. It really took the edge off during his down time and was like old times when she would talk to him, reminding him of the times of his basic training when she would just regale him with the things she had done in school, only now she was more prone to teasing him; Describing what she was wearing at the time, results varying oftentimes, offering to talk dirty with him. The girl loved messing with him, it was almost like Sniper Wolf's version only she could do it without hanging off of him in person and flirting.

Back to the point however.

With his HF Blade in hand, Naruto stood facing down one of his clones, standing twenty feet away holding a pistol.

"Okay…" Naruto said to himself, "Time to try this with real bullets." He took several deep breaths as he stared at his clone, "Do it!" He shouted as the clone pulled the trigger… only for nothing to happen.

The clone pulled the trigger several times only for nothing to happen. Naruto watched it do so with a deadpan face before turning away from the clone and walking away, "Figures… the first time I get the balls to shoot at myself so I can try to block actual bullets and the piece of shit gun jams…" He started to walk away before a gunshot rang out and Naruto felt a sharp pain in his rear end, "Fuck!"

Turning around, Naruto saw his clone pointing the gun at him. Having never even been given the mental order to cease trying to fire, Naruto's clone managed to unjam the firearm and proceed with its orders.

Naruto glared at his clone as it disappeared in a puff of smoke and the pistol dropped to the ground. He limped over to the gun in order to pick it up, "…I miss my clones back when they had free will and common sense… I really took that for granted."

* * *

><p><strong>Alright, another chapter complete and up. I would say that I have one more chapter left until the events that those used to the Metal Gear experience are knowledgeable of will take shape.<strong>

**To get the gist of what's going on I think it is prudent that one be actually somewhat learned on what exactly comprises the universe that Metal Gear is set in. I beseech you to look in the Metal Gear Wiki or ask if you don't know something that I'm alluding to, since sitting and explaining it would possibly take 1000 words or more to do so. **

**I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you enjoy my works then I am glad, but I do this for myself and for my own entertainment purposes. I'd be doing this even if I'd never found this site in the first place.**

**Until next time all, Kenchi out. I need to be at work by 3 pm and it is 2:40. Damn, I'm going to miss the U.S.-Japan World Cup Final. Those were my favorites anyway so I don't care who wins, it still should be good.**


	17. Part of the Solution or the Problem

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Now all you lawyers out there looking to make a quick killing can all stop trying to Google Kishimoto and Kojima's contact information so you can tell them to sue me. I just said that I _don't_ own anything… so suck it.

**Chapter 17: Part of the Solution or the Problem**

* * *

><p>(May 2006 – Chitose, Hokkaidou, Northern Japan – Naruto: Age 19)<p>

"This is a terrible idea…" Naruto muttered to himself in the cover of darkness as he looked through a pair of special binoculars to get the best layout of the place he was about to infiltrate as his mission to mess with allied U.S. armed forces to get American allies to improve, "I had to pick the primary base for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force…" He mumbled with a sigh, "Oh well, as long as everything doesn't outright turn to shit I should be fine by myself."

He was wearing the same thing he had on during his mission in Tokyo to infiltrate the company building that housed the nanomachine data he had given to the Patriots; his trench coat, makeup covering his whisker-marks, and sunglasses pulled up to his forehead so that he could use his binoculars. He had even managed to temporarily tame his hair by slicking it back, thought it would only hold for a few hours max due to how stubborn his traditionally spiky follicles were.

Unlike other missions where he had to sneak into places, as a part of Dead Cell he had to provide signs that someone (i.e. him) had actually been there and had done something significant that compromised their security, and it had to be a location significant enough to cause a stir if he was able to cause a massive ruckus.

Which was why he selected the Chitose Air Base to attack. It was the Japan Air Self-Defense Force's primary base in northern Japan, and it was responsible for monitoring the ocean borders with Russia, covering Japan's northern side defensively. Not to mention the fact that the military airfield was right next to a civilian airport, the New Chitose Airport, the most significant civilian airport in the Hokkaidou region in Japan. Yeah, this was a fantastic target to terrorize.

Other than the conventional reasons there was another reason other than his Dead Cell mission that he had chosen the particular location he had selected to attack. He probably would have picked an easier detail, but that was before he had taken his mini-vacation and had managed to… catch up with a friend of his.

_(Flashback – Two Days Prior – Sapporo, Hokkaidou, Northern Japan)_

_Naruto had arrived in Sapporo with the intention of getting in a free day of his own before he received any contact from the friends he had left with Olga over one year prior. He thought that maybe he would take in a baseball game or something… maybe get a few presents to smooth over his year-long 'long time no see' asskicking that he would possibly wind up taking depending on who was allowed to come and greet him in Japan._

_He did not expect to be beaten to Sapporo by the person that was meant to contact him, Sniper Wolf._

_Nor did he expect the first course of action to be taken to be the older female soldier dragging him off to the nearest hotel, and he certainly didn't expect her 'hello' to be sex… he certainly wasn't complaining though, because it wasn't like he had the opportunity to partake in any carnal pleasures while hanging around with Dead Cell and with the Patriots breathing down his neck. Sniper Wolf was rather upset with him though, so the first leg of said copulation was rather violent… luckily the scratches on his back healed within the span of a minute, otherwise his back would have looked like a scratched out tic-tac-toe board._

_But he swore she was doing it on purpose, because she didn't scratch him nearly as much the first time they had done it. Her own way of showing him she was upset for just being left in Africa the way he was forced to do._

_(Lemon Start)_

_He still didn't care that much though._

_Wolf found herself set down on the small dresser that was provided by the hotel room, her back against the glass of the mirror sitting attached to it. Whether she was gasping at her heated bare flesh touching the cold glass, the fact that Naruto playfully had his teeth sunken into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, or because somehow Naruto had a golden memory and remembered from last time exactly how to hit all of her special spots even when he was standing up she just wasn't sure._

She _didn't care that much though._

_One of Wolf's hands were clutching the edge of the dresser so tightly that her nails were digging a slight mark into the surface of the wood every time Naruto thrust himself forward into her._

_As the young man six years her junior showed that 19 was old enough to know what he was doing by fucking her relentlessly on the dresser, Wolf thought about the fact that Johnny and Meryl both wanted to be allowed to head to Japan to see Naruto instead of her and it came down to a decision from Olga to see which one of them were allowed to come in the end._

_This Sniper Wolf would have gone back in time and shot them in their legs to make sure they _weren't _able to show up in the first place after realizing this would be what she got upon Naruto's arrival, "Being with a lack of women for so long must have really gotten to you little probie. You didn't even look flustered this time when I took my clothes off in front of you." Wolf breathed out heavily as she wrapped her arms around Naruto's neck to pull him closer, biting back a cry as in response to her comments his thrusts into her increased in pace._

_Naruto let go of his love bite on Wolf to address said topic without stopping pelvic motion, "If you didn't do it yourself I probably would have convinced you to do it somehow anyway." He said, putting a kiss directly on her lips before pulling away in pain, "Ow, damn it! Did you just bite me?"_

_Wolf smirked and pushed her forehead and nose against Naruto's, "You bit me first. And you've been a bad probie. No one's seen you in a year and every time you call us, after you hang up Olga curses you out in Russian or Meryl will just plain curse you out. I'm afraid I'm upset with you too, I'm just more passive with my aggression." She then found abruptly set back on her feet and turned around before she was swiftly bent over and penetrated from behind, causing her to let out a surprised and lust-fueled cry._

"_Well if this is you showing me that you're mad, I can't say that I hate it." Naruto said, kissing her neck as he continued to satisfy his former superior who was probably thoroughly exhausted by this point._

_Wolf let out a sigh of pleasure, knowing that she'd have quite a few hellish hickeys to hide for the next few days. She did growl akin to the animal her codename was based on when Naruto slapped her backside prior to grabbing her hips. All she got in response was a challenging grin and Naruto burying himself fully inside of her cunt. Oh, she just couldn't stay mad at him._

_Especially with the pace he was setting. The jitters from Naruto's first time were gone at this point, and coupled with the fact that he simply _had not_ had relevant contact with any woman in a year, and he didn't have time to be flustered or impressed with himself. Plus the stroke he had from behind Wolf was much appreciated even if she felt that her legs were about to give out._

_Naruto could feel this too and looped an arm underneath the front of her waist to help keep her steady, "Come on Wolf, we aren't done yet. Now say my name…" He said, fucking her hard enough that the dresser was hitting the wall it was against._

"_Little probie." Wolf said teasingly, though her voice was fluttering, "That's always been your name, and that's all you'll ever hear me say."_

_Naruto moved his hand that wasn't holding Wolf up around her waist under one of her thighs, lifting up her leg to allow him to get at her from a different angle, "That's not very nice." He commented, savoring Wolf's cries of desire once he switched things up slightly again, "I'm still kind of new at this. How am I going to know if I'm doing this right if I don't get you to say my name Wolf?" He asked, as if he had been ignoring the fact that he had Wolf screaming on and off for the last few hours._

"_You're doing it right." She assured him breathily as she pushed herself backwards to add to the momentum, "You're definitely a quick study for certain." Wolf lay her cheek down on the surface of the dresser as her eyes were seeing sparks, "You're a bastard for making me wait so long…"_

"_A bastard named…?" Naruto hinted as he started slowing down intentionally to tease Wolf. It wasn't often that the shoe was on the other foot when it came to their interaction, and if he knew how to do anything he knew how to take advantage of a situation. He slowly drew himself out of Wolf, but he was only planning on stopping just before pulling out. Teasing only went so far, and Naruto was not about to mess up his own impending release just to get one over on her._

_Fortunately, Wolf in her love-hazed cloud did not even think of calling Naruto's bluff, more concerned with the threat of her pussy being left empty before she came, "Alright fine! Naruto! That's your name, not little probie! Now fuck me you spiky-haired whisker-faced bastard!" That was all Naruto needed to hear to give Wolf exactly what she desired, bringing her to a rather noisy climax, "God that feels so good!" She exclaimed joyously as even when her knees began to buckle if she was going to go, that was the way to do it._

_Hearing Wolf shout out loud in her lovely accent brought Naruto over the edge as well as he was the next to cum once she tightened around his cock. Naruto leaned over Wolf's back as he let her leg fall, however he was still holding her up around the waist, softly stroking her belly with his fingers. He kissed the back of her neck and smiled when he heard her chuckle quietly, "Want to go again?" He asked._

"_Can't go again…" Wolf said, closing her eyes for just a moment as she could feel her own love juices flow down her legs. She reached back and tangled her fingers in Naruto's hair but whined when she felt Naruto pull out of her and carry her over to the bed to lay her down on her back, "It's certainly nice to see you again in good health… _very _good health."_

_(End Lemon)_

_Naruto rolled his eyes and removed his condom to toss in the trash before he sat down on the bed and ran his fingers across Sniper Wolf's body aimlessly, "So yeah… I'm working for the jerks that got Snake roped into going to Shadow Moses and did all of the shadowy crap like having me kidnapped." Yeah, sex with Wolf was very necessary. He was calmer than he had been about his situation in months, "Luckily they still think you and the others are all dead and I plan on keeping it that way until I find a way to fight back."_

_Wolf frowned at that, but she had already been told as much, just not in person, "I have some news for you as well little probie." She said, grabbing Naruto's hand with both of hers and guiding it over her body to the places she wanted him to touch, particularly directing him to softly massage her breasts, "It turns out that one of the countries that wound up buying Ocelot's black market Metal Gear specs is the one that we're in."_

_That was strange news to hear. He knew that the unstable regions of the world managed to pull something on Metal Gear in, but to hear that Japan actually managed to get some plans into their fold under the eye of the U.S. was something new, "Japan has a Metal Gear REX?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow as crawled over Wolf to get behind her and hold her in spoon position, "That's really messed up." He said as he pulled the covers of the bed halfway over their bodies._

"_It's not REX." Wolf informed him thoughtfully, "It's more of a cheap knockoff, more akin to the older, inferior Metal Gear models if anything, just like all of the others that have been spontaneously popping up in development since last year. Do you really think that Japan could assemble the resources to build a perfect copy of REX? None of the countries that have the pirated plans can build anything close to being as advanced as REX. Either their engineers are incompetent or Ocelot didn't hand over the entire plans for sale." The latter would have been the smartest, "There are records of prototype Metal Gears turning up destroyed in countries all over."_

"_The one here is still dangerous though, right?" Naruto inquired, snuggling his face into the back of Wolf's neck and shoulder, "It can still shoot off nukes, just not like REX could." The plans for a rail gun must have been separate from REX's main design originally, "*sigh* Fine, I guess that's what I'll go and destroy for my Dead Cell mission…" He was really hoping that he could pick something easy, but he couldn't take the slacker's path when something as important as this came up. The less places with Metal Gear derivatives the better._

"_Do you need backup?" Wolf asked with a yawn._

"_No, I'm supposed to sort of make myself known as a part of the mission." Naruto told her honestly, "I can't risk any wind of you being caught by the Patriots, you and the others being off the grid and me being close to Olga are a major advantage… the only advantages I have right now. All I need is the location of where the thing is being built, I can handle it myself from there."_

_Wolf nodded and a smile found its way to her lips, "I'll tell you after I wake back up. I want you to fuck me again first before you leave." She then felt Naruto's cock stiffen up along her backside at the inclination of having sex again, "Seriously? It hasn't even been three minutes yet."_

"…_An entire year without seeing a single woman up close…" Naruto said in a deadpan voice as if that explained everything._

(End Flashback)

According to Wolf's information, a building was constructed not too far from the main part of the airfield once it became known throughout the region that Japan was building something there. No one would actually keep the Metal Gear on the main portion of the base because of its close proximity to the civilian airport, nor would they stick it anywhere near the training facility nearby and have it be guarded by green soldiers. Thus it was placed a few miles away from any of these things, west towards Lake Shikotsu, halfway between the airbase and the civilian attraction lake.

For this mission he had no support, but his objective was plain and clear, get inside, find the Metal Gear being constructed, destroy it, if possible he was to find any trace of the plans meant to construct it and he was meant to destroy or sabotage those as well. Then he was supposed to simply leave, all the while making sure that he made it known that he had indeed been there and that someone had wanted them to know that.

There were no fences around the facility, it was just open field leading up to the large building. For a rare experience, Naruto would have to participate in a procure-on-site mission. This meant that he would not be able to take any weapons with him into the field with the exception of his HF Blade. His last mission just days before in Tokyo was pretty much the same, but that was child's play and a gun wasn't needed.

No guns, no shuriken, no kunai, no metal wire, no explosives (…well, a few explosives), just his sword. He really hated procure-on-site, and yet it was necessary. Anyone with half a brain that saw him fight and could report on whatever damage he caused doing such could be able to identify him by the weapons he used. He didn't need to be personally identified and turned into an international criminal, he just needed to crash this little Metal Gear party.

He had already placed the charges from the only other things he had managed to bring with him for the operation. Naruto had planted plastic explosives on communications equipment and even on the base's anti-aircraft missile launchers. This wasn't going to come into play until later however.

It was clear that the base had been hastily constructed for something unspecified since from his reconnaissance since there was only one dirt road leading to the base in the first place. It wasn't very large at all, 'The place must have been built back when the knowledge of the plans first went out, just so that they would have some place to construct the Metal Gear.' He rolled his eyes, 'They must be following the shitty pirated plans to the letter.' The piece of crap Metal Gear sure wouldn't hold a candle to REX if he actually had to destroy it in battle. Less than one year was not enough time to develop something that was _superior_ to REX, especially with half-assed plans based on Metal Gear REX.

There was flat land and no cover, so for Naruto speed would be the silent killer on this mission. Quite literally as a matter of fact, as he quickly located a side door under guard by two wandering guards. Silent steps and the cover of dark concealed his approach through the high grass surrounding the research building.

Bursting from the tall grass, Naruto and a clone of himself both sprang into attack, quickly subduing the two outside guards with smashing attacks that sent them to the ground and rendered them unconscious. As his clone dispelled in a puff of smoke, Naruto smiled to himself. Dealing with the soldiers that Dead Cell usually found themselves opposing meant that he usually wasn't getting battle-hardened enemies. Most of these guys had never even fired a weapon at a living person before. The best of the JSDF were deployed to assist the U.S. and the unified forces in Iraq. It almost wasn't even fair that he was about to turn the place inside out.

He had to be out of there before dawn so that his escape could be kept under the cover of darkness, but he probably wouldn't be there for any longer than an hour or so. With such a hastily built structure there were lesser security measures placed within, such as no special doors to find his way around. How long did they expect it to take to build a superweapon? Put some damn personnel-specialized locks onto the doors!

Apparently patrolling the halls wasn't a big thing either, since the main lights were off and the building was pretty much empty. This was less of a military research facility than he expected it to be. It wasn't exactly teeming with guards on the inside.

Wasn't that good for him?

There were security cameras of course, which was even better since they would undoubtedly pick up the blur that was the fast moving Naruto sprinting through the halls. The kanji signs that he had nearly fallen out of practice of reading before coming to Japan directed him towards a weapons lab.

He was very disappointed when he picked the lock to the door and arrived however. It wasn't a large area where Metal Gear was being developed, it was just a room with different sorts of international weaponry strewn about, possibly for research purposes. There was no ammunition in the room though, and most of the guns had been disassembled, so none of these guns were useful.

Muttering to himself about his crappy luck as he walked through the room, possibly looking for anything to help him further along in his self-given mission, Naruto stumbled upon a desk cluttered with gun parts only to find one completely assembled weapon.

A handgun that had a bowl-like structure around the barrel. It was mostly yellow in color and the barrel of the gun didn't look as if it was meant to fire bullets or explosives of any sort. The structure around the barrel seemed to have grid-like markings, looking something like a solar panel as there was a small plate sticking out pointing straight ahead from the bottom of the barrel as well. On the side of the gun was a small meter that spanned from red to green with the indicator pointing all the way into the green field. On the grip of the gun was a second trigger of which he was not aware of its purpose.

Naruto picked the gun up and looked at it. He had never seen a weapon like that before. It wasn't any heavier than his usual SOCOM pistol with its complete attachments, but there was no sight or crosshairs to assist in aiming. Looking back down at the table he found a handwritten note.

_The Solar Gun prototype still needs formal testing to find any other practical bugs that need to be worked out. Sunlight recharges the weapon fully through the built in solar panels. Rate of fire is hard to control for uncharged shots, but the recoil of the weapon is impossible for untrained developers to use functionally when producing a charged shot, the power of the weapon produces too much kickback, even trained soldiers claimed that two hands were needed to operate the weapon. The power of the gun should be decreased, but how to do this and still have it remain a viable gun to use is unknown._

_My suggestion is that the Solar Gun project is a failure._

Naruto finished reading the note and ripped it to shreds, dropping the scraps on the floor with a scoff, 'Decrease the power of the gun? Yeah right. We'll see about that.' As far as he was concerned, the Solar Gun sounded kickass. Just because some scientists and some green soldiers that had never actively been in battles couldn't use the gun didn't mean that it should have just been discarded as if it were a failure. Just because a weapon couldn't be mass produced didn't make it useless, and Naruto had a soft spot for anything or anyone deemed to be unfairly labeled as a 'failure'.

He would take it for himself and see just how useful the gun was firsthand. Naruto figured that this was enough to let someone know just how far into their facility he had gotten. Stealing their prototype weapon was more than a big enough deal to let Japan's military know that such lackadaisical security measures would not be up to snuff in the future, even if it was a weapon that was about to be scrapped.

With the souvenir that was the Solar Gun in his possession, Naruto continued through the facility in his search for his target. Abruptly however, the lights came on and the sound of a very stern voice sounded out, "Freeze!" Naruto skidded to a stop and turned around to find that there were five men pointing their guns at him, "Don't move or we'll shoot!" There must have been some sort of alarm in the weapons lab, or maybe someone found the two guards he had beaten up outside. Oh well, it took long enough for someone to catch on to what was happening.

Naruto just drew the Solar Gun and pointed it at them, a blank look on his face from behind his sunglasses as he used his other hand to draw the HF Blade. Once the men saw him pull out the two weapons they began to fire. Naruto grit his teeth and started fighting off the bullets with the HF Blade before he simultaneously lifted the Solar Gun and pulled the trigger.

In a burst of semi-automatic fire, several small bullets of light slammed into the five men with the velocity of normal rounds and hit them hard enough to send them flying down the hall to smash against the wall, rendering them unconscious.

"Holy crap!" Naruto said, looking at the Solar Gun's handiwork in amazement, "How the hell could they say that you suck? The weak bastards just couldn't hold you without the recoil knocking their aim off…" He spoke to the gun as if it were a person. He sheathed the HF Blade up and still held the Solar Gun at the ready as he crept through the facility. It didn't take him long to reach the main hangar that the building was originally built around.

There he found his Metal Gear that he had been intended to sabotage surrounded by maintenance catwalks. How did he know that it was the Metal Gear? Well besides the fact that it was surrounded by aforementioned maintenance catwalks, it stood twenty-five to thirty feet off of the ground and had two legs… just like every other Metal Gear he had ever heard of.

It had a very narrow torso that sat between a very thickly armored block-like top half and a pair of armored reverse-jointed legs, though the legs weren't as heavily armored as REX's were. The top half had a cockpit built into the front of it that one could see out of, though he assumed that once the machine was activated there would be a heads-up display as well. There were no arms, but there were guns built into the front and missile launchers built into the top specifically meant for launching a nuclear payload. Naruto actually laughed when he saw cannon set between the legs of the Metal Gear.

'There are so many jokes I can make right now…' He thought to himself before getting serious and deciding that the best way to just destroy the damn thing would be to destroy the weak looking torso that was meant for the top half of the Metal Gear to pivot freely for a more versatile way to allow it to deal with up close threats.

The hangar was empty, and deciding to not look a gift horse in the mouth and deciding to finish his job before anything could go wrong, Naruto scaled the catwalk and began to plant all of the Semtex he had on his person underneath his trench coat onto the torso of the weapon.

As he looked up he read kanji that stated the name of the Metal Gear, "Metal Gear HAGURU…" Naruto shrugged to himself and continued to plant explosives, finishing up and dropping down to the ground just as the main hangar doors were opened up. Cursing under his breath, Naruto hid behind one of the massive legs of Metal Gear HAGURU, taking advantage of hiding within the catwalk as well to hide his location further.

"Lock the hangar down!" The commanding officer of the soldiers shouted, "No one is getting into this place alive! Shoot anything suspicious or not in uniform!"

"Son of a bitch…" Naruto muttered to himself softly. Well, the cavalry had arrived at long last. They didn't know that he was in the hangar though, which gave him an idea. It was time to blow those charges he had set earlier on their communication and on their anti-aircraft weapons. Naruto pulled out his detonator and hit the button without a second thought, producing a low boom in the distance back towards the actual airfield.

"Damn it! It was a feint for an attack on the airfield! Everyone back to the base!" Get back into the vehicles on the double!"

Peeking his head out to take a look, Naruto saw that the dozens of soldiers that had been filing into the hangar had stopped doing so, opting to get back in their jeeps and hummers and speed back to the actual airfield since it was actually a high priority target.

Only a handful of men wound up being left behind, putting a victorious grin on Naruto's face. Misdirection at its finest if he had to say so himself in his own humble opinion. So with the hangar door wide open, Naruto felt it was time to get himself the hell out of dodge. He tuned his Codec to the frequency to summon his platform board and dashed out from his hiding place, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Naruto and his clones pounced on the unprepared and jumpy soldiers and mercilessly beat them senseless before anyone was aware of what happened to them. He then ran outside of the hangar and began sprinting west towards Lake Shikotsu, where he had requested Sniper Wolf to stash his platform board for him before she went back to the Gurlukovich Mercenaries. It was a seven mile run to the lake and he was planning on meeting his board halfway before using it to escape.

As he started his sprint through the tall grass that surrounded the research facility he pulled out a second detonator and hit the button as he continued to run away, hoping that the pair of explosions would confuse, frighten, and further misdirect the troops to keep them from trying to search for him prior to him escaping.

After a few minutes of running he grinned at the sound of his board's propulsion system whirring and jumped into the air just for the metal board to slow down once it reached him, allowing Naruto to safely land on it and stick with his chakra. He took a moment to look back towards the base he had just caused havoc at, watching the massive amounts of smoke billow up from the anti-aircraft missiles he had destroyed, the communications area he had blown to bits, and the hangar housing Metal Gear HAGURU that he had turned into a twisted metal wreck with all of the explosives he used to make sure that the weak point was fully exploited.

Gunfire forced Naruto to turn his head towards a hummer with a mounted machine gun that was speeding towards him. Naruto grit his teeth and began taking off in an effort to escape the vehicle on his platform board. Staying evasive as a small, fast target allowed Naruto the chance to fight back, but he only had one weapon on him.

He drew the Solar Gun and opened fire with the burst rounds on the hummer, hitting the military vehicle, but not causing it any damage other than causing it to swerve slightly, "Fuck!" Naruto shouted in response. He wasn't going to knock that damn thing off with the Solar Gun, at least not the way he was currently shooting. But he was not going to penetrate the shell of the hummer, nor was he going to shoot through the glass with a gun that didn't use bullets.

In his haste to fight with a weapon that he was unfamiliar with, Naruto mistakenly pulled the second trigger that was further down on the handle and held it down, expecting the burst fire he had been getting from the Solar Gun.

Instead, the sound of something charging sounded out, and instead of a burst of small bullets of light a larger light projectile flew from the gun and hit the front wheels of the hummer, tearing apart the front wheels and axle and flipping the hummer over violently.

The kickback while Naruto was on the board sent it spinning out of control for a moment before Naruto regained his ability to direct his board. He stopped and stared at the wrecked hummer and then at the Solar Gun before he grinned even wider than he had upon seeing it in action in the lab, "I'm seriously keeping this thing." He said before looking at the meter on the side of the gun, frowning at the sight of the meter saying it was empty, "Duh, Solar Gun, recharges in sunlight."

His mission accomplished, Naruto flew his board south to head to the main portion of the Japanese islands to wait out his ride from the Dead Cell aircraft carrier. Colonel Jackson would definitely hear of this attack and would know that he was the one that had instigated it.

XxX

(Mission Briefing)

Otacon: "Um, Snake? The mission is a wash. You can return now…. Heh."

Solid Snake: "What? Weren't you the one saying that if it was discovered that Japan had a version of Metal Gear that could raise an alarm with Russia, North Korea, hell even the U.S.? Why are you calling me back now? I'm already here."

Otacon: "Because someone already beat us to the punch and took it out. Don't you watch or listen to the news?"

Solid Snake: "…You didn't recruit anyone else into Philanthropy to take some of the operational weight off of my shoulders did you? Because I told you not to after Natasha went into hiding after funding us. We have to be careful with who we think we can trust with what we know about-."

Otacon: "I know! I know! Honest, it wasn't anything to do with Philanthropy. It was a complete maverick attack. Whoever did it tore up a lot more than just the Metal Gear being built there, but there weren't really many fatalities. At most, five people were killed and they weren't scientists, they were soldiers. Survivors said actually saw action say that the attacker in the labs was a blonde young man that could block bullets with a sword. It's like a pattern because a few days earlier a big company based out of Tokyo that specialized in nanotechnology was attacked by someone fitting that description as well."

Solid Snake: "*grunt* The kid? Naruto Uzumaki… He's the only person I can think of that could maybe be the one doing this. Remember, he saw Gray Fox and saw him use his sword to block bullets. He took Gray Fox's sword after Shadow Moses too, he had the reflexes to learn how to block bullets himself. You know how impressionable young people are when it comes to things like that."

Otacon: "You think it's him? Maybe he's out to take down all of the offshoot Metal Gears he can find too?"

Solid Snake: "I don't know. He doesn't seem to be the type of guy… for all we know he just found out about it and wanted to nip something like this in the bud before an incident could happen. What, do you think we should look for him to recruit? I wonder if Meryl is still with him."

Otacon: "I don't think that's such a good idea Snake. I mean to say, I think I'd rather not."

Solid Snake: "You're still sore at him about Sniper Wolf aren't you?"

Otacon: "…"

Solid Snake: "*sigh* You're going to have to let that one go sooner or later. He saved all of our asses and helped save the world. If I were in his shoes I would have been forced to kill her too. Would you still be working with me if I had?"

Otacon: "It's just… he never even apologized for it you know? They were friends, he had lived and worked with her for a while and then he could just fight her and finish her off like that, he didn't even seem bothered for it."

Solid Snake: "You're acting like I didn't more or less do the same thing to Gray Fox in Zanzibar Land. The kid did what he had to do, and you can fault him for that if you want to but I won't. Then again I wasn't head over heels for Wolf the way you were so I guess I can't judge."

Otacon: "I guess. *long pause* Hey Snake, have you ever been in love?"

Solid Snake: "What kind of weird-ass random question is that to ask me? Do you ever think I've had even the slightest amount of free time where people weren't shooting at me to do something like that? I can't produce any offspring anyway remember, so the point would be kind of moot don't you think?"

Otacon: "Still, the second thing you said shouldn't matter. I just wanted to know. If you had said yes then maybe… maybe Sniper Wolf and I would have had a chance or something, I don't know. I was just wondering if even for soldiers, maybe love could bloom on a battlefield."

Solid Snake: "I can't say that it's impossible, but the thing about it is this; anything like that born from a place where death and sorrow is commonplace is usually doomed from the start. There really aren't any happy endings in a scenario like that no matter what the circumstances may be. If love blooms on the battlefield, you have to remember that just like any other flower that blooms it will probably stay there. And just like any sort of flower on a battlefield it can be destroyed just like that."

Otacon: "…There goes that 180 IQ of yours again… sometimes I forget you're actually a smart guy and can say stuff like that from time to time Snake. I might be smart, but I'm no philosopher, I'm a scientist."

Solid Snake: "Yeah… sorry to burst your bubble and everything, but that's just how I feel about it. Blaming Naruto for Wolf's death is like blaming him for stepping on a beautiful flower when he was running away from gunfire. It's unfortunate and anyone that admired the flower would be sad, but it's just circumstance."

Otacon: "I think there's another good reason we should find Naruto as well Snake. Naomi spoke to you about FOXDIE and said that she did something with Naruto that helped her design something specific for it. Maybe if we find him we can come up with what it is. Maybe it's a cure?"

Solid Snake: "I wouldn't put that as a priority but why not? How do we even find that kid anyway? This thing in Japan is the first peep anyone's heard out of him in more than a year."

Otacon: "I guess we'll just keep an ear to the ground for him. If he's really trying to do the same work that we're doing then eventually we'll run into him again sooner or later. Head on back Snake, the mission is cancelled."

XxX

(June 2006 – U.S.S. Wilderness – Naruto: Age 19)

A little downtime from Naruto's training and attempts to get some kind of advantage and leg-up over The Patriots was called for.

In the common room of the Dead Cell section of the aircraft carrier the members of the unit were lounging around with their usual hobbies. Chinaman was meditating, Old Boy was playing chess with Vamp, Fatman was taking apart and reassembling his handgun, and Naruto had somehow procured himself a 20 inch TV and a Playstation 2, Mortal Kombat: Deception being his game of choice at the moment.

Old Boy panned his eyes over to Naruto who was lounging in a chair with his feet kicked up in another as he seemed to be mindlessly pressing buttons without peeling his eyes from the screen or blinking from his lazy stare, "Feh, I cannot see how the brat can stomach playing that garbage all day. He hasn't moved any part of his body other than those thumbs of his in three hours. He'll rot what's left of that tiny brain of his."

"Fuck you." Naruto said in a sing-song voice as he continued to aimlessly play his video games, "I play games because it makes me feel good that other people, even fake people, get into stuff as ridiculous as the stuff that I do sometimes. Besides… what the hell am I ever going to get out of chess other than getting beat again and again by you and Vamp?"

"Tactics…" Vamp suggested as he moved a knight, "Patience… Things like that. You could serve to learn a thing or two about that. You're rather brash in most of your actions in the field Rapture."

Naruto lazily looked over at Vamp before turning his attention back to the game as the next round of his fight had just started, "First of all just because I don't like taking my time and waiting things out doesn't mean I don't know how. I worked with Sniper Wolf in FOXHOUND… that shit was boring. You want to talk about patience, how about laying in a thicket or a sand dune for a week?"

Old Boy let out an incredulous snort and even Chinaman started speaking Mandarin under his breath, possibly calling Naruto a bastard of a liar, but he couldn't tell since he didn't speak it. At that moment Colonel Jackson walked into the room and dropped a manila envelope in Naruto's lap and stood over the young man with his arms crossed over his chest.

Naruto paused the game and looked up at Jackson with a raised eyebrow. He looked down at the folder in his lap and up at his commanding officer, "Okay, since you're not going to tell me I'll just ask. What's with the folder Colonel? Do I have another mission?"

"I made you take an IQ test before you went on your last mission alone." Jackson said, "Your score is in the folder."

Naruto kept looking at Jackson with his eyebrow raised before shrugging and shaking his legs to shimmy the folder off of his lap, "I don't care." Naruto said as he unpaused the game and kept fighting.

"You don't care?" Jackson said incredulously, picking up the folder off of the ground and waving it in front of Naruto's face to distract him from the game, "That's bullshit Rapture, everybody wants to know what their IQ is." He stopped waving the folder in Naruto's face when Naruto spat a small throwing knife from his mouth that punctured straight through the folder and stuck there, possibly a warning to stop fucking with his gameplay.

"Everybody except me." Naruto said dully as he kept playing. Knowing his IQ wasn't going to get him out of any kind of situation, especially the quite shitty one he was in currently as the gofer for The Patriots, the faceless group controlling the American state from behind the scenes directing Naruto by way of his 17 year old sister's future. It meant nothing. An IQ test was nothing more than an ego boost or an ego diminisher. He didn't want the former and at the moment he sure as hell didn't need the latter.

Jackson looked skeptical, but eventually relented and walked away from Naruto figuring that it was his choice. As he walked past Fatman, the rotund bomber stopped Jackson and addressed Naruto, "So Rapture… would you mind too terribly if I were to look at your score?" He said with a grin. He could have just taken it and looked at it anyway, but if Naruto wasn't in the mood for games then he would have beaten his ass.

"Knock yourself out." Naruto said just as dull as ever.

Fatman's grin grew wider. Everyone there knew that Naruto was far from the most scholarly person out of the lot of them and then some. Whatever his horrible score was, Fatman was going to lord it over the blonde until he ran the joke into the ground. With this in mind he ripped open the sealed envelope and panned his eyes over Naruto's score, his grin dropping into a look of shock as he handed back the test results to Jackson, "That's just impossible…" He said, sounding almost crestfallen as he plopped back down in his seat.

Jackson read over the results and grinned widely, "Well look at what we've got here. Rapture you scored right around 140." That got eyes to turn to Jackson from all over the room with the exception of Naruto who was still playing games.

"Well that sucks." Naruto said matter-of-factly, confusing everyone in the room, "I was hoping my score would be _over 9000_!" Naruto said, finishing in a Kyuubi-boosted demonic, gravelly voice for dramatic effect before frowning, "Damn it, I fucked up the Fatality… you guys are talking too much."

The room then fell silent with the exception of the loading screen music for Mortal Kombat until Vamp decided that if no one else was going to say anything he might as well be the one to do it, "Rapture… the test scores don't go that high. 140 is actually very good. It's technically a genius IQ." He said, completely missing the joking reference Naruto had just tried to make.

Naruto snorted in amusement, "Do I look like I'm a genius anything?"

"An idiot savant… This is just like Rain Man…" Fatman said clutching his head in his hands.

"No it's not." Naruto said as he was punching in buttons for combos, "First of all I don't have autism, second of all none of you cheap bastards would ever take me to Vegas even if I _could_ count cards, and third of all I don't buy boxers or a single damn thing from K-Mart. Ever. Did you even watch that movie?"

Fatman let out a cry of anguish, "How could some brain-dead little battlefield rat beat my score? Did you cheat?" He asked accusingly.

Naruto shook his head, "I didn't even know that was a test. I thought the Colonel was fucking with me or something."

Jackson read the rundown of Naruto's score, "According to this you are a quick problem solver. You work better when you're under some sort of handicap or when you're especially stressed. You also find unorthodox yet basic methods to deal with complex problems that you can't handle otherwise, and it usually brings about positive results. It's impressive."

"Cool." Naruto said sarcastically, "Now can everyone shut up please? I'm fighting Onaga in arcade mode with Liu Kang and I just found out that his flying kick is a monster against that scaly bastard."

Old Boy looked at Naruto and shook his head before returning to his game of chess, not caring that Vamp was still more or less staring at Naruto, "There is no way on God's green earth that this brat is smarter than me." The old soldier said.

"'God's earth' is mostly blue since the world has more ocean than land." Naruto said in a smartass fashion, smirking when he heard Old Boy curse at him in German.

XxX

(July 2007 – Naruto: Age 20)

Sitting alone in his room was a common activity for Naruto to spend his time doing while on the aircraft carrier. The Patriots hadn't dispatched him on a mission since the start of the year, and even then it was just to leave a dead drop, probably for another operative under their control. It was very different from the whirlwind of missions he had been forced to take in his first year and he didn't know how to feel about it.

Were they running out of ideas for how to use him? They had to be aware that he was looking for the quickest out he could find. Either way, the downtime of not being sent on back-to-back missions for both Dead Cell and The Patriots for the first time in a long time allowed him an opportunity to train himself and his ability to manipulate chakra. By pestering Chinaman repeatedly until he told Naruto what he wanted to know, Naruto had gotten a hint on something rather amazing.

According to the angry mystic of Dead Cell, the ability to work in conjunction with nature, at least as far as his own abilities were concerned, happened by using one's inner energy to allow one's body to adjust to the element in question.

At first Naruto didn't know exactly how to make that work, but then he came up with a rather barbaric way to do just as Chinaman had hinted him to do.

Laying down on his bed with a clone sitting at his desk nearby, Naruto held his hands in the ram seal and began channeling chakra through his entire body before letting out a sigh and looking over at the clone in the chair, "Okay, do it."

Without a word, Naruto's clone held up a taser without a cartridge, allowing the electric current to be seen and held it onto Naruto's body directly, shocking him with it. Naruto bit back a cry of pain and held his concentration and flow of chakra up before after nearly a minute he let go of the hand-seal, the cue for his clone to stop shocking him.

With the taser off of his body, Naruto started taking deep and heavy breaths to settle down his body that had more than a reasonable amount of volts going through him. Routine training had been resulting in Naruto doing this for five months. The reason he still did this sort of thing to himself was simple as he held up a hand and generated chakra to his fist, ending up with him producing a short charge before it copped out and faded.

It was working.

He could generate electricity from his body using his chakra due to the fact that his chakra had adapted to the element by way of horrible self-torture that he laughingly referred to as training, but it admittedly wasn't very much and other than augmenting his punches he couldn't do anything with it at the moment. Still though, if he knew that letting himself get electrocuted while molding his chakra to help him alter it was possible then he would have let Ocelot test his little torture machine on him a few years ago.

Not really, but he had thought about it from time to time.

And time was the one thing that he had plenty of on this aircraft carrier. The Patriots knew what they were doing when they stuck him with Dead Cell on the ship. They had a way to keep him watched 24/7. Even when he was able to skulk around and move freely there was no way for him to get any information on who they were. This forced him to alter the way he had planned on doing things. He wasn't going to be able to find the people behind everything himself, even with the help of the team he had left with Olga. There was nothing they could do if he didn't even know what to do in the first place.

If he was going to get himself and Catherine free then he was probably going to have to pull a Liquid. He was going to have to find some way to obtain something that he could hold over their heads that would leave him untouchable.

He really didn't want to do that, because as Liquid had shown there was really no way that it was going to be clean no matter how much firepower the conspirator had, and it had a whole different host of disadvantages that came with it. It was better to the alternative of existing with the guillotine swinging high above his neck however, and he had the resources. He just needed to go about things in a more subtle way than Liquid did.

'Long-term planning is not my strong-suit.' Naruto thought to himself, looking over at his clone and dispelling it, their training over with for the day. He had to do something though. He couldn't keep doing this with his life, fighting someone else's fight.

He had killed for The Patriots and it had made him sick because despite the fact that it had just been regional warlords and targets like that, mostly bad people, he had no beef with anyone he had been ordered to kill. And he really didn't like killing for no reason, but he was learning to be apathetic towards it, instead learning to direct his attention to the thrill of the mission, so much so that the more danger he found himself in the more he seemed to enjoy himself. There was something wrong with that and he knew it.

Inside of Naruto's head, the sound of his Codec going off that no one else in the world could hear went off. He touched his hand to his ear and began to speak, "Hello."

"_Uzumaki."_

"Olga." Naruto said, his voice taking on a rather excited tone in hearing hers, "You haven't called in a while." And she hadn't, but her presence had still been felt. Whenever he talked to any of the others, Olga would always give some input as she overheard what he was saying and would direct them to tell Naruto what she wanted to tell him. She tried to make it seem as if she wasn't listening in, but it was always clear that she was, "I was starting to think you were mad at me or something. I haven't heard anything from you since I was in the Kuril Islands last fall. You're welcome by the way."

He heard Olga scoff over the line, _"I didn't need your help to catch my target Uzumaki, I especially didn't need you to catch him for me and leave him signed and delivered. How did you infiltrate his militia anyway to get him out in one piece?"_

"Well you see…" Naruto said calmly, "I have these things called guns, and I have these techniques called ninjutsu but you call them superpowers just to try and piss me off. With them I can make my own personal hit squad to help me make things like that easier. Thus I had a clone take the bastard to you to help out once I realized that you were there too."

He had been dispatched on a mission to neutralize the same person that Olga had been hired to capture or kill. Seeing that she needed the target more than he did, he handed him over to her since it didn't matter how the job got done for him, Olga on the other hand needed proof of her work to get paid.

"_I don't see why you sent one of your useless clones instead of sending yourself to hand him over though."_ Olga tried to sound impassive, but it was rather clear she was irked that Naruto didn't show himself in person.

"I can see everything my clones see, I can even control them as if they're my own bodies." Naruto informed her, "So that means that when my clone told you that you were still cute it was still me talking." The gunshot the clone received in response was painful and dispelled it, but it was still hilarious once Naruto got over the phantom pain of his clone's wound. Olga was easy to rile up.

"_I would say that I'm going to kill you for that when I see you again, but I want your help."_ She said in a serious voice, _"I'm calling in my favor from you Uzumaki."_

This got Naruto to sit up from his resting position in his bed to pay attention. He had sometimes shadowed Olga whenever it was convenient for him to help her out in little ways, but she hadn't ever asked him to do anything like that. It was his way of assuring her that no matter what was going on with him personally he would help her and his other friends when they needed it. This was the first time he had been asked to assist her before, not since she asked him to try to take out Ocelot in Lyon in 2005.

"You know that you don't need to call in favors for my help Olga." Naruto said earnestly, "Tell me what you need and I'll see what I can do."

"_I need you."_

"Sweet." Naruto said with a grin on his face, "I knew you'd come around eventually. You couldn't possibly hate me as much as you say you do. So where am I getting a hotel for our rendezvous?"

He heard an exacerbated sigh over the line that was probably accompanied by a facepalm that he wished he could see, _"No you idiot… I actually need you to be where I'm going in person. I need to see you here firsthand, no clones, no messages telling me that you're close. _You_ need to be here yourself."_

Naruto nodded in agreement, not that she could see it, "Name the place." He could get away somehow, he knew it. Under the guise of a mission perhaps? He could always request one since he hadn't been out in quite a while. Everyone knew that 'Rapture' got stir-crazy very easily.

"_New York City."_ Naruto raised an eyebrow when he heard Olga give him the city name he was meant to go to, _"You need to get there as soon as you can. I'll tell you when I get there, but if you beat me and my father's men there then just wait for me."_

"You've never been in America before." Naruto commented, stunned that she would actually set foot on U.S. soil. He was going to ask her how in the world she was going to manage to do that, but she seemed to be rather candid about it. There was something else he could try to ask though, "What the hell are you doing in New York?"

"_I… think I would rather tell you in person. But I just need your help. I can't do this myself. It's impossible for me."_ He didn't know what it was, but Olga sounded a little distressed in her request for his assistance, _"Please."_

But the fact that she was even asking for his help in the first place stuck out. She had been helping him for two years, the least he could do was stick his nose in and help her out of this jam of whatever she was in, "I'll head there as fast as I can get away." Naruto said, "I'm kind of stuck down around Hawaii right now on an aircraft carrier."

"_Well if you can get away call me then."_

"I'll see you soon." Naruto then turned his Codec off and stood up. There was always one way that he could be allowed to step out into America to handle any issue he needed to do. It would only be good for one use though.

For as long as he had been a member of Dead Cell there was always the intent for an operation that would see them attack something in a major American city to test homefront defense capabilities the way they tested America's allies with the same 'attacks'. This particular mission to attack a target of their choice in America was never taken by Colonel Jackson because he didn't find it to be the wisest course of action for the unit to take. It was never officially thrown out however, it was just repeatedly set back as not being a priority.

He'd just volunteer for it himself.

Either way, he figured that he needed to be there because whatever was meant to happen there just screamed 'trouble' to him. And Olga sounded as if she didn't have any control over what was going on either. As Naruto got up to leave his room and request his mission to Colonel Jackson he hoped that the sinking feeling he had in the pit of his stomach was just that spontaneous paranoia of his.

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><p><strong>Chapter complete. Honestly, the mission was just an excuse to use Snake and Otacon again before next chapter and to introduce the Solar Gun. Everyone's favorite blonde protagonist will be falling into another massive mess very soon that will be shaking him up again. For better or for worse? I don't know, just wait and see I guess.<strong>

**Now I need to get my ass to training to see if I can't make it a little bit harder to beat myself up.**

**Anyway, hope you enjoyed and I'll catch you all as soon as I update something else that you actually read from me.**

**Kenchi out.**


	18. Yet Another Fine Mess

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. The song "Jack Sparrow" by The Lonely Island is officially the greatest thing I've heard all week. Why the hell did I not know about that song at the start of the summer? If I am ever a UFC fighter that's the first song I'm choosing to come out to.

**Chapter 18: Yet Another Fine Mess**

* * *

><p>(Late July 2007 – U.S.S. Wilderness – Naruto: Age 20)<p>

Colonel Jackson stared at Naruto as the young blonde dressed in his civilian clothes stood in front of his desk in his office with a determined look on his face. He thought that if he stared at the kid long enough he would probably reconsider what he had just asked for. Sadly that was not the course of action that Naruto took, if anything his gaze got even more dull and listless.

It was really creepy how he could just flip that switch sometimes. He couldn't hide his emotions on the battlefield like this, he let it all show on his sleeve there. In his downtime however he could be stone cold if he wasn't given an actual reason to care… and right now he didn't care that he was getting the staredown from his commanding officer because he wasn't even being insubordinate. If anything he was actually showing initiative.

"Rapture are you insane?" Jackson asked Naruto with a dry tone of voice, and that actually managed to get a grin out of Naruto, 'Fucking brat loves pushing my buttons…'

"I can speak freely right?" Naruto asked, getting a nod, "People have been asking me that since I was younger." He said matter-of-factly before his grin faded, "But not this time, no I'm not crazy. Come on Colonel, I haven't been anywhere in seven months." He hadn't even gotten to go to Catherine's high school graduation. They weren't even working him and they wouldn't let him go see her, he had to call her on the Codec about it, "Chinaman's being a dick about getting dispatched more than me, and Fatman keeps planting little explosives all over the fucking place to try to either scare me or kill me." He sounded rather perturbed at that last part.

"He's been trying to kill you?" Jackson said, sounding incredulous… yet it wasn't that farfetched at all… damn arrogant, crazy bombing bastard, "Why didn't you bring this to me sooner?"

Naruto shrugged, "Because I can smell that stupid perfume he sprays on all of his bombs as his signature and I just diffuse them. He doesn't use anything that would really cause any damage, that's why I don't know if he's just messing with me or not. Even if one of them exploded it wouldn't kill me anyway."

Jackson looked at Naruto with a raised eyebrow, "I thought you said you were going to kill the next one of them that tried to attack you."

"I'm walking on thin ice with golf cleats as it is." Naruto informed him, "I can't get upset every time someone does something stupid, especially if it's something I can handle." Back in FOXHOUND Ocelot used him to play William Tell, Sniper Wolf played 'hunt the probie', and Vulcan Raven made him meditate for hours in the rains of South America and in the snow in Alaska. It was going to take more than what Fatman was trying to piss him off.

The Kyuubi wanted him to take the last bomb he found and shove it up the man's ass before detonating it. They came to a healthy compromise when Naruto just blew up his toilet with the man sitting on it.

"So you're just getting stir crazy again." Jackson accused of Naruto who didn't deny it.

If Naruto played it cool instead of insisting that he needed to go on this mission then he had a better chance of being allowed to go. It actually was urgent because he was actually asked to go and help. Olga had never asked him for a favor that would only really benefit her before, and she had been helping him since after Shadow Moses, thus he thoroughly owed her… besides, even if he didn't owe her he would have made his way out there for her.

Hearing the Colonel's accusation, Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "I've had months to master my new tricks, and R&D fixed my new suit up. I want to test it in the field. Come on, you know I can pull this off. I even have a place to run and hide to after whatever I plan is all said and done."

"You're attacking something military-based in the U.S. Rapture." Jackson said, "Not even a team of Dead Cell members are willing to take this mission. Why do you think I never assigned it to any of you? If you pull off anything it's going to cause a shitstorm. If you mess it up then the President is going to kick my ass, and I'm going to have to come kick your ass… if you aren't even dead by then."

Naruto let out a scoff and leaned against a wall, "Don't give me that scaredy-cat crap. You know I can pull this off. I'm the only one that's never been pegged. Everyone else has been partially ID'd at least once. All people have ever said about me when any kind of report on the stuff I've done goes out is that I'm a blonde guy. Whoopdee-fucking-doo. That's really descriptive."

That much was true enough. At least Naruto took to disguising his very distinguishable special features such as his whisker-marks, hiding his vibrant eyes, and slicking back his wild hair whenever he went to work, sometimes even dying it if he was in the mood to do so. If all anyone had to go off of was a blonde man then they would never ID him.

He got results for certain. And he was better at escaping than anyone else in the unit. If anyone could pull a job and get away then it was him, "So where are you going to hit if I let you go on the mission?"

"You know I can't really tell you that Colonel." Naruto said with a pronounced frown, "It's supposed to be need-to-know, and I can't even give you hint without blowing the gist of the mission." He was halfway full of crap, he could at least say where he was going… but the Colonel was still more or less Naruto's babysitter for the Patriots, and the more he could slip out of their scrutiny the better. He liked Colonel Jackson, that didn't mean he could really trust him though because he was still his not so subtle handler.

"…Whatever you do is going to be on the east coast anyway." Jackson said with confidence, "Just don't do anything stupid like take a shot at the President. You know how _they'll_ take that. For your own good you're going to want to reconsider if that's what you planned on."

Naruto crossed his arms and shook his head in disbelief, "Do you really think I'd be that stupid?" All he got in response was a deadpan look from Jackson, "Okay, so I'd pay ten million dollars for a decent swing at that piece of crap, but I wouldn't do that for this… even though I could probably kidnap him."

"That wouldn't solve your little problem. It would just make it worse." Jackson said in a chiding tone of voice, "He's not really the one in control, remember. It's beyond him. That would be the equivalent of just kicking dirt on the Patriots' boots."

"I know, I know." Naruto said with a grumble, looking down before turning his blue eyes up towards Jackson once more, "So can I go?"

A stiff nod came from the colonel, "Don't get caught, and if you have to die make sure your body can't be recovered. And remember, if you get captured here you're not getting out, you'd better get ready for a trip to Guantanamo Bay."

"Good to know you've got so much faith in me…" Naruto said sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he opened the door and left the office, "Tell me when a pilot's schedule frees up to take me where I need to go. I'm going to get my gear and get ready."

"You've got a way out of whatever you're doing don't you?" Jackson asked before Naruto fully shut the door, "The whole country's going to be after your head if what you do is big."

Naruto stuck his head back through the small opening and gave a confident grin, "I've got somewhere to run to until I get an opening to get back to the aircraft carrier, don't worry about that."

XxX

(One Week Later – Early August 2007 – New York, New York – Naruto: Age 20)

Once he had actually reached New York he had to hang around without any further instructions for quite a while. For several days he wrestled with the thoughts that he was somehow being set up, but the way Olga cared for her subordinates and those that were on her side he repeatedly squashed those thoughts and kept himself at the ready, prepared for whenever he would receive a call.

Eventually however, his Codec went off while he was simply sitting around in a hotel room and he received a simple to the point message of, _"It's time."_ With that, he pretty much immediately hopped up and gathered what few things he had brought to dance with to check out. It wasn't like he was going to stick around or even come back to that city after he was done.

In a quick manner, Olga gave him the rundown of where she wanted him to wait. In the dead of a rainy night he kept himself hidden on the bank of the swelling Hudson River underneath a camouflage sheet waiting for what Olga said would be the only vessel coming down that way that night. A simple oil tanker called the U.S.S. Discovery.

The first portion of his objectives just so happened to be to gain entry onto the ship and to find her without getting caught. Apparently there were sentries on that ship, but he needed to know more before getting on, hence why he called her before the ship ever came into sight, "Olga I need more if I'm going to get on this thing. Where are you?"

"_Inbound. I'll be there myself soon enough. What, do you not think you can infiltrate it by yourself? You need me to hold your hand and get you onboard?"_

He could tell that was a jab meant to challenge him. Even now they still felt the need to repeatedly attempt to one-up the other in some kind of way, and despite his knowledge of this it worked like a charm.

Kami he hated that woman so much…

Okay, not really. But if anyone asked him directly that's how he'd respond and he was pretty sure that she would as well.

"Oh you're just so charming aren't you?" Naruto replied acerbically, "Fine, whatever, I'll get myself on there easily enough. What am I dealing with here?" He knew he wasn't dealing with regular sailors because that would just be too easy.

"_Honestly? Your U.S. Marines."_

"Fuck." Naruto hissed to himself. She knew this was going to happen in advance. Olga probably could have told him that before he ever even agreed to come to New York in the first place. "…Fine. All I have to do is avoid a firefight right? You know, you could have told me this last week."

"_We didn't know until yesterday."_

"We?" Naruto said questioningly, "Who else is here? What, did you bring my crew?" This didn't sound like the kind of thing she would have done that for. She said that only he could help him, which in his mind meant no crew, he was flying solo.

"_No such luck for you Uzumaki. When I said 'we' I meant myself, and my father's best men. I'm here for my own reasons however. This isn't the problem of the others, but I do believe that I need your help. For now just get on the ship and hide yourself. You will know when I arrive."_

Well if they were here then what did she need him for? He'd find out soon enough he wondered, "Fine. I guess I'll see you in a bit." Naruto could see a ship heading his way, and Olga said that there would only be one coming that way on this night. In a rush of speed, Naruto darted from under his camouflage sheet and began rushing across the surface of the dark river, unable to be seen, 'Come on… faster, faster, faster.'

As he reached the ship itself he jumped and stuck himself to the side of it before continuing to sprint his way up the side of the hull, casting off his camouflage sheet fully. The momentum of his run was not to be stopped, as Naruto continued to run forward and upward, even after making it on the deck of the ship. With his ability to stick with chakra, he ran up to the upper decks and then even to the top of the bridge.

Yet to be even seen or heard, Naruto eventually made his way to the highest point the ship could provide. As he stood atop the top of the lookout, easily balancing on a point far too high and narrow for any other person to stand atop as effortlessly as he was, he was able to get a good look at where the ship was heading.

Naruto himself wore a deep, dark green operational suit that had black knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves. Instead of having boots the way Snake's sneaking suit did his had footwear in the form of the sandals he had become accustomed to in his youth. It was rather snug on his form as you could see the definition given to him from years of intense physical conditioning and specialized training. His suit was also designed to work in juncture with his newfound abilities to manipulate electricity from his body, as the material didn't take damage when he chose to run a current through his body.

On his forehead was a black headband with the metal leaf inscribed plate that represented Konoha, something no one else could tell what it really meant to this day, and on his back he had the HF Blade at the ready. At a thigh holster he had only one SOCOM pistol and he still had his extra pouches for his special ninja tools, but to make up for his lack of secondary firearm he had something new.

Around his right forearm was something of a grey conical structure that stopped at his wrist to leave his hand free for regular use. After bringing the Solar Gun back for study, it was made into a special attachment for Naruto's particular sneaking suit. The design was streamlined to go around his forearm and work with the suit he wore. Naruto's entire suit could now be used to gather solar energy to power the weapon and it could be used by sliding the conical design forward from its original position on the forearm in a cocking motion. The sensation of Naruto tightening the muscles in his right forearm and right hand fired the weapon at that point.

Making sure all of his equipment was in order, Naruto looked ahead to see a suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River connecting New Jersey to Manhattan. As the ship prepared to pass underneath the George Washington Bridge, Naruto hopped down to a crow's nest, took a seat in a meditative position, and merely waited for Olga as he ignored the rain pouring down. She'd be there soon enough.

XxX

(George Washington Bridge)

_The Hudson River, August 8__th__, 2007._

_We had classified intelligence that a new type of Metal Gear was scheduled for transport. The whole thing stank, but our noses had been out in the cold too long._

In the rain, walking towards the Manhattan side of the bridge past the traffic at a calm and demure pace, a man in a poncho seemed to be the only person insane enough to be outside in that kind of weather. A cigarette sat in his mouth, serving an almost aesthetic purpose in this instance due to the weather before the man plucked it from his lips and tossed it casually to the side without pausing for a moment.

All of a sudden he began to break out in a seamless sprint, running faster than any normal person could keep up with before his poncho flew off and his body turned invisible with an electric shimmer, reminiscent of the use of stealth camouflage. The only thing visible to the inattentive, naked eye like those of all of the people on the streets driving in the rain were the footsteps kicking up small puddles as he ran.

After running for a spell the man simply dove over the side railing with a grunt, beginning his descent off of the bridge with a swan dive. A cord tied to his person kept this from being nothing more than a strange suicide attempt as the cable allowed him to level out and rappel off of the side of the ship he was seemingly diving onto. After one bouncing motion off of a wall on the ship he freed himself from his rope and fell the rest of the way to the aft deck, the sound of the ship's horn as it went under the bridge disguising the sound of the man landing on his feet with a crash and a crouch as he stomped down on the metal hard enough to damage his stealth camouflage to the extent that it failed, presenting himself as fully visible once more.

The man looked up at the sky for a moment revealing himself to be Snake with longer brown hair and a rather rugged beard. He still wore his suit that he had first used at Shadow Moses as well as a black headband that he kept tied around his forehead.

XxX

Hovering just out of view and sound of the ship due to the storm raging at the moment, a Russian-made helicopter was steadily circling overhead. Inside of the helicopter sat Revolver Ocelot, watching the ship through a pair of binoculars as he did trick spins with one of his revolvers in his other hand, "Our boy is right on schedule. He'll know soon enough."

XxX

(U.S.S. Discovery – Aft Deck)

Snake stood up from his crouch and quickly ducked behind some of the clutter on the deck before activating his Codec, "This is Snake, do you read me Otacon?"

"_Loud and Clear Snake."_

"Kept you waiting huh?" Snake quipped before getting serious, "I'm at the sneak point. The stealth camo's busted… landing impact."

"_We must have overused it… Sorry but you're going to have to deal with it. You're not really in the military anymore."_

"Right." Snake said, not caring too much about his loss of equipment, "I didn't plan on relying on this gadget anyway."

"_The private sector's not so bad is it?"_ Otacon said in reference to their more or less mercenary status, _"Guaranteed privacy and all that?"_

Snake frowned at that, "I'm happy as long as no one gives me any more unwanted 'gifts'." He said, in reference to FOXDIE, "…And I can't say that I miss the chattering nanny." His support team throughout Shadow Moses.

"_Mei Ling's not so bad."_ Otacon defended, _"That reminds me, I need to get in touch with her again about that new Natic flashwear."_

Snake let out a groan, "Stop diverting toys from the S.S.C.E.N. (U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center). Give her a message from me: Someone's going to find out sooner or later. She's better off assuming it's sooner and quitting while she's safe."

"_True enough… alright Snake, let's get to work."_ Otacon said, ready to begin the actual briefing portion of the mission, _"You know how the technical specs of Metal Gear were sold on the black market after Shadow Moses?"_

"Ocelot…" The dislike in Snake's voice was obvious for anyone to hear. Getting strapped to a metal table and electrocuted repeatedly would sour you on someone rather easily.

"_Exactly. And now every state, group, and dotcom has its own version of Metal Gear."_

"Not exactly a classified weapon for today's nuclear powers." Snake said sarcastically. It used to be a weapon that people could use to accentuate control, a deterrent to keep things running smoothly, a last ditch go-to. Now it was just for all sorts of nations to build, able to find their own way to try and duplicate or improve upon what had already been tried.

"_This new one seems to have been designed to wipe the floor with all of the other models. The only consistent description that we could find was that it's an amphibious, anti-Metal Gear vehicle."_

"That explains why it's under Marine Corps jurisdiction."

"_The mission is to make visual confirmation of the new Metal Gear being transported by that tanker and bring back photographic evidence. But first I need you to go up to the top level of the infrastructure to the bridge. We need to find out where the ship is headed."_

"A little reconnaissance huh?"

"_There's still too much we don't know about this new prototype. Capabilities, deployment method… we don't even know how close it is to completion. If we know where the testing area is I can start to draw some reasonable conclusions."_

"Alright, I'll head to the bridge a.s.a.p." Snake said, more or less ready to get the party started and get out.

"_Try to avoid a confrontation. Our job is to get evidence on Metal Gear development and expose it to the world. It would be best if you could get out of there without alerting anyone."_

Who did he think he was talking to here? Snake had been sneaking in and out of hot-zones since he was twenty-three years old. Twelve years of experience in solo sneaking didn't just leave in a few months time, "Don't worry, I know the drill. We're not terrorists."

"_Good. Don't forget that you're part of 'Philanthropy', an anti-Metal Gear organization that's officially recognized by the U.N.-"_

"-Officially recognized, but still fringe Otacon." Snake said as a manner of correcting the man running support for him on this mission. As he listened and spoke, Snake went to check the only weapon he had on his person for this job; a silenced M9 modified Beretta 92F/FS handgun meant to utilize knockout tranquilizer rounds.

"_You brought cigarettes again..."_ The deadpan tone signified that it wasn't really a question.

"It's a good luck charm." Snake defended as if it were his go-to excuse.

"_You haven't read the Surgeon General's warning have you?"_ Snake honestly didn't care. He'd been catching crap about his smoking since he was a teenager. Cigarettes had actually saved his ass more times than he could count… and they made him feel better. So what?

Ignoring Otacon, Snake pulled out a small digital camera and began to survey what he could see of the ship from his position. He could see the posted Marines walking around, weaponless and wearing ponchos as they toted flashlights, "They don't look armed."

"_Hey, Earth to Snake. These are nice, upstanding Marines, not terrorists. Don't get caught. We're in stealth mode here."_

"Sure. And if it comes to it a little beauty sleep never hurt anyone." Snake said before switching topics, "By the way Otacon, are you sure about this intelligence?"

"_Absolutely. Hacked it out of the Pentagon's classified files myself."_

"No traces?" Snake said in a tone that left the answer up in the air.

"_Oh please. I'm too good for that."_

"But this might be a trap." Snake said as he kept scanning the decks he could see with the camera's zoom-in feature, "Remember that there's a price on our heads." They'd done things like this repeatedly over the past two years since Shadow Moses, but Snake never had a bad feeling before like the way he currently had.

"_You're just being paranoid."_

"I hope so…" Snake said, not too convinced at Otacon's chipper attitude. If the shit started to rain down he was the one it was going to fall on first and immediately, "Those men, you wouldn't think they were anything but civilians from here." He said, commenting on the sentries posted about that were supposed to be Marines.

"_Putting uniformed Marines on the deck would be a bad idea. People can get a clear view of the boat from the riverside too."_

"The waterline's too high." Snake commented as he could see the waves crashing about around the ship, "According to the navigational plans, this ship should have discharged its cargo upriver."

"It's_ definitely in there, no doubt about it."_

Snake's observation of the deck brought about another point to be made, "The military trains you to watch for threats from the stern on a boat. That's S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure) for counter-terror ops too. Security should be tighter."

"_You worry too much."_

"Where's the target?" Snake asked in a rather irritated manner. It was probably a combination of his gut feeling and the way Otacon was trying to casually brush it off as if it was just paranoia. Just because you're paranoid didn't mean that people weren't out to get you.

"_Well satellite surveillance is a major international pastime these days so I'd say the cargo hold, safely below the deck. You can probably find more than a few entryways into the holds."_

The faint sounds of a helicopter whirring overhead attracted Snake's attention momentarily before he looked back around the ship to see if any of the guards had heard it. As he focused on one of them he was shocked to see a man in orange and brown camouflage with a balaclava sneak up behind the guard, "What?"

The Marine guard sensed the presence of another behind him and turned to engage, but with the combination of the element of surprise, plus the fact that he was unarmed he quickly fell to a rather gruesome death by way of the balaclava-clad invader's knife that had been concealed from Snake's view.

And much the same was happening all over the deck as these Marines were stealthily taken down by these mysterious attackers with naught a sound made.

"Looks like we're not the only ones after Metal Gear tonight…" Snake reported to Otacon as the new arrivals disposed of the bodies made from their slaughter over the sides of the ship, "What's their game, hijack?" He wondered out loud as he saw them all pull out their actual firearms, AKS-74u's, to begin patrolling and heading inside of the ship themselves to take it over, "Otacon how many men would someone need to take over a ship of this size?"

"_The ship is run by a computer so I'd say about 18 people."_

Examining the scene further, Snake took note of a man on a higher deck. He was rather large, wearing a brown jacket that stuck out as very different from what the other men were wearing. He must have been the leader. He was an older, physically imposing man that had a grey box-style haircut and a mustache, "Russians?" Snake said, almost in an incredulous manner. This was kind of far out of the way for them wasn't it?

"_You sure?"_

"No Marine barber touched that head of hair." Snake said with confidence. Between the weapons the men were toting around and the looks of their commander he was more than certain of his guess. And once he saw the man put on a woolen Russian-style cap with a military insignia on it to cover his head from the rain he was sure that his guess had been confirmed. Snake snapped a picture with his camera, "I'm sending you a photo. Let's get an ID on him a.s.a.p." He put his camera up and prepared to get moving, "Either way it looks like the ship is theirs now. We need to get a fix on who they are."

"_Listen Snake, all we need is photographic evidence of Metal Gear. As long as we have that we can put it online and blow the whole thing wide open, so no pyrotechnics alright?"_

Rolling his eyes Snake felt that he had to take back his earlier statement of not having any nannies watching him any longer, "Alright, I'll do my best."

"_This isn't like Shadow Moses. Reach me if anything happens. I'll be waiting just past the Verrazano Bridge. You need to be off of that ship by then."_

"I'll be in touch." And with that the conversation was ended and Snake began to sneak about to begin his mission, heading to the bridge of the ship first to get the intended coordinates of the vessel.

XxX

(Navigational Deck – With Naruto)

After overseeing her portion of the U.S.S. Discovery's takeover by the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, Olga simply kept in place around the front of the upper deck. She had been pacing about impatiently and informed her father's men that she wished to be left alone except for the most pressing of issues that they couldn't bring to her father himself. It would be safe for a conversation there, if he ever showed up.

'Where the hell is Uzumaki?' Olga wondered to herself as she paced about. She wore a military cap camouflaged in the same manner as her fatigues, in the same pattern as the rest of the mercenaries aboard the ship. She wore brown gloves and a tight white and black striped t-shirt with a pair of suspenders over her shoulders to keep the rather baggy up over her hips. Her hair was still cut very short and her face was twisted in a frown, 'He should have beaten us onboard.'

"Guess who."

Olga stiffened at the sound of the voice, but didn't react with anymore surprise other than that. She wasn't going to give the bastard the satisfaction. When he wrapped his arms around her waist and picked her up from behind she wanted to stab him though… cheeky bastard did that the last time they met too. Or was that his clone that tried that? Either way it was off of his order so it was basically him doing it no matter what.

"You have five seconds to let go of me or I'll throw you into the Hudson, missing some very important 'equipment' as well." Olga said calmly, prompting Naruto to let go of her immediately, "That's what I thought." She said, getting some satisfaction as she felt how far away he backed.

"Five seconds… last time you gave the clone three." Naruto said as he got some distance, "Maybe because you knew it was actually me you let me get my hug in for an extra two seconds?" Naruto suggested with a grin as he stood in front of Olga for the first time in almost a year. She still looked really good… and she could still muster one hell of a scowl when prompted to, "You still wish you could just fight me again and be done with it, don't you?"

"Every time I hear your voice… you have no idea." Olga said as she crossed her arms over her chest, "I hope you've picked up some new tricks because you're going to need them this time."

Naruto leaned against the railing of the upper deck and waited as Olga moved next to him and did the same, "Well you called me, and you were really vague about what you want me to do. I want to help, but you're going to need to clue me in. Why couldn't you just tell me what you wanted over the Codec?"

"I needed to confirm what I thought I needed you for." Olga said, looking down at the ground with her arms still crossed, "Do you know what is on this ship?" A deadpan look then came from Naruto that she turned towards to meet with her own stare, "Right… well to put it short terms it's a Metal Gear."

"The one you got Wolf to point out to me in Japan last year was a piece of crap. REX was ten times scarier than that thing." Naruto informed her, "Is this one as much of an eyesore as that one was?"

Olga frowned at his question. He could have put it more eloquently at the very least, "I wouldn't know since I never saw REX or the one you speak of. But my father seems to believe that this one is superior to the Metal Gear REX model."

Naruto ran a hand through his soaked hair, matted down by the ongoing downpour, "Why does he think this one's the holy grail of Metal Gears? It could be just as useless as the one you sent me after in Japan."

Olga's features turned from a frown to an outright glower, "Because _he_ told my father that this one was the design that would make up for the loss of REX two years ago."

Naruto's eyes widened because he only knew one person that Olga disliked enough to change tones in that matter over, "Wait, Ocelot is here? He's the reason all of these groups can get their hands on Metal Gear designs in the first place. And he got your dad all fired up to steal this one?" Olga nodded stiffly, "That's the greatest idea I've ever heard."

"What?" Disbelief filled Olga's voice. Did Naruto actually complement Ocelot for something?

"Think about it." Naruto urged her with a nudge of his elbow, "He sold the plans on the black market and made enough money to buy himself a damn decent-sized country, and now he's about to get your old man to take the pick of the litter, the next step up from REX. He's getting his hands on an upgrade without ever putting in a hint of research or development money."

"I need you to destroy it." Olga said abruptly before Naruto could get off on any more of a tangent, because he seemed prepped to start on a long-winded one, "Destroy the prototype so that it stays out of my father's hands. Shalashaska… I don't trust him, and I have a terrible feeling, but all my father sees is his chance to get Metal Gear so that Russia can rise to power once again. He sees him as a comrade in his cause, but I do not." She stopped pleading her case when Naruto set a hand on her shoulder.

"All you had to do was just say 'Ocelot' and I wouldn't have asked you any other questions." Naruto smiled at her in a calming manner, "I still want my answers from him too. And if this Metal Gear is bigger and badder than REX then I guess I can't let it get mass-produced so don't worry your pretty little head-."

"-Just don't kill any of the men… or my father." Olga asked him, "Please." There she went with the please again.

A sigh came from Naruto upon hearing her last request, "If I didn't love you so much…" He muttered, intentionally saying it loud enough to get a rise out of her. A hard punch to the shoulder from Olga put a grin back on his face, "Your dad hates Americans and has a grudge against me because I killed Liquid Snake and helped botch the Shadow Moses rebellion. I wasn't planning on running into him anyway, but fine I won't kill anyone Little Miss Sentimental."

Scoffing at his intended joke, Olga rolled her eyes, "Excuse me for wishing my father to see the birth of his grandch-." She stopped herself mid-sentence when she realized what she had been saying and that she most certainly _had not_ wanted Naruto to hear it.

"Someone's thinking pretty far ahead." Naruto commented offhandedly before what she said actually took enough time to sink in. Why would she even bring that up unless she-? His head immediately jerked towards Olga as he seemingly stared a hole in the woman, "No way. You're actually-? Just, no way. That's…"

"Don't. Say. A word." Olga warned him with a growl, pulling the brim of her cap down in an effort to hide the red gathering in her cheeks at getting found out by this idiot. She didn't want to hear his mouth, it was why she made his own team swear to keep their mouths shut. She just didn't need him knowing.

"That's adorable." Naruto said, shaking his head with a smile on his face, "I didn't think you'd have a baby Olga, at least not this soon. You're like 22 aren't you?" He then blinked in confusion, "Wait, why the hell are you here then?"

Olga walked off of the rail she had been leaning against, "I'm three months along, I can still function just fine. What do you care anyway?" She said with a little venom in her tone, something that surprised Naruto.

"What do I care?" Naruto repeated questioningly as he cocked an eyebrow, "We're friends Olga." She kept her back to him and walked further away as if she wasn't listening, "You're actually like my _best_ friend." Seven years ago he probably would have found something wrong with that, but now it didn't seem like a bad thing at all.

However she tried to cut the conversation short, "This isn't the time or the place for this."

"Then when?" Naruto asked, "We haven't seen each other in person since the Kuril Islands thing. You don't even talk to me anymore, you make the others relay anything you want to say. You've been like this ever since I left. You're the only person outside of my team that I can trust and-."

"Do you really trust me Uzumaki?" Olga said tersely, cutting him off, "I told you years ago that friends and enemies change in a heartbeat. You learned that not too long after I said it when FOXHOUND tried to finish you off."

Naruto pushed himself off of the railing as well and jumped directly over her in an attempt to get her to face him, however she simply turned away from him again, "I want you as my friend. I don't see any reason why we'd go back to being enemies now."

"Then why did you just leave?" Olga whispered out, "Do you know that I was about to do whatever I could to get you a place in my father's unit? If we had gotten rid of Shalashaska in Lyon I could have gotten you an in with my father in less than four months. And when you wound up working for these Patriots that you claimed have your 'balls in a vice' why didn't you come to me then? We could have gotten your sister out no matter who they are. You could be free right now." She turned around to face him with an angry look in her eyes, "So how could you say that you trust me when you didn't trust me enough to ask me for help?"

So that's why she started pushing further apart after he went back to America? He thought they were getting close, and then once he went to work back under the Patriots their relationship became professional… acquaintances at best despite the fact that he thought they were good friends, "This runs deep Olga, deeper than I even still know. How could I ask you to stick your neck out like that? I had already asked you to do me a huge favor after Shadow Moses-."

"-By asking me to take in a group of soldiers that include _Sniper Wolf_, the greatest sniper in the world, as if such a thing would be a hindrance to me. Meryl is a wonderful soldier, and Johnny… is if nothing else trustworthy." Olga argued back with conviction, "That was not a favor that I did you, I took away the only people in the world that actually wanted to watch your back and bolstered my unit's forces with their presence. That is _not_ a favor! You did _me_ a favor! All that ever happens is you doing me favors, and I've never helped you, not once! So how can you say I'm your best friend?"

Silence stood between them as the sound of the storm was the only thing that filled their ears. Naruto finally chose to speak up with his answer, "Because I want you to be. Because you're amazing. Because I like the person that you are, not because I think you can do things for me." He spoke his next words clearly and with full belief in what he was saying, "Olga Gurlukovich you are my best friend. Deal with it."

Olga's immediate response was to punch him in the face, and he didn't bother blocking it or dodging it. He simply took the hook on the cheek and stumbled back several steps. That actually surprised him that she was able to hit him hard enough to move him. She had definitely been training to beat him in combat one day the way she always said she had been if she could do that with one punch. With the exception of rubbing the bruise on his cheek that was rapidly fading, Naruto didn't even react to getting decked.

The glare on the Russian woman's face faded once she realized what she had done. There had been no reason to hit Naruto and it was actually quite embarrassing to have done so, "So… I'm your closest friend am I?"

"Yep." Naruto said without any anger in his voice at getting hit, "I'll go ahead and blame that punch on you being hormonal and we'll just leave it at that."

"I hate you."

"I know… you're still my best friend though." Naruto walked forward and put both of his hands on her shoulders, "And as your best friend I will always have your back. So where's the stupid Metal Gear I'm here to turn into a flaming wreck like I did to REX?"

Olga pointed directly down, "Stowed away below deck, deep within the cargo hold." A small smile came upon her face, "And don't die Uzumaki. I'm the only person that gets to kill you, always remember that."

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto said, tilting his neck to the side, eliciting a crack, "Maybe when your kid is born and grows up you can train them to kill me too. Turn it into a whole family affair. Yeah, teach your baby to stab Uncle Naruto right in the heart because otherwise I won't even come close to dying." He saw the amused look on her face when he apparently named himself the uncle, "If you think you're having a kid and I'm not the godfather then you're out of your mind. So who's the dad? Does he hate me too?"

"The dad is an asshole, and yes he does." Olga said with a smirk, "Because you screwed up FOXHOUND's rebellion most of my father's men hate you except for the ones that are more so under my command." If she was honest, Olga had to admit that bantering with Naruto in person was something that she missed.

Naruto started walking circles around her, "Well he has a good reason I guess. Maybe he's worried that I'll steal you away? Like I keep telling you, scar or not you were always really cute."

"The father is a non-factor, not needed nor wanted, so you won't ever be seeing him." Olga commented dryly, a ghost of a smile on her lips. Sadly the banter was destined to come to a close as choppers sounded out around the ship. On both sides of the ship, more Gurlukovich Mercenaries began rappelling onto the lower decks. Once the helicopters were seen by Naruto he ducked out of the way of their sight to avoid detection.

With her attention diverted by the helicopters, Olga didn't even notice him disappear and couldn't tell where he had gone to, 'Faster…' As she thought this, Olga's radio went off and she picked it up to speak to whomever was calling, "Yes?"

"_Shalashaska has landed."_

Hearing her father update her on the current standing of the mission got a narrowing of the eyes from Olga. After the conversation was over she would summon Naruto back to her somehow from wherever he ran off towards to hide from the helicopters and tell him as much.

"_I'm on my way to the tanker holds. Report your status."_

"Control room, communications and engine room are under control." Olga replied dutifully, "All entry and exit points to the tanker holds secured. Infrared sensors placed and operational."

"_Good work. Are the explosives in place?"_

"Yes, they are all planted." Olga said as she walked about the front of the navigational deck. There was much random clutter up front; materials covered in tarps, multiple crates, metal shelves, bright lights directed back towards the rest of the ship… all sorts of things.

"_Listen. Once we have what we came for the tanker will be scuttled."_

"And the vehicle's pilot?" Olga asked. If the ship was to be abandoned once the Metal Gear was obtained then who was to drive it away?

"_He's the only one who's undergone the VR training. No one else can do it."_

When her father mentioned 'him', Olga knew just who he was talking about and it made her blood boil somewhat, "Are you sure you can trust him?"

"_Your part in the mission is complete. You are to leave at once."_

Like hell she was leaving until she knew that Naruto had gotten away with taking the new Metal Gear… and possibly Ocelot's life too if he so felt like it. Even capturing and kidnapping the man would be applicable in this case, "No, it's not over yet!" She argued back.

"_I can see the moon, even in this storm. Pale as death. I have a bad feeling about this mission. You swore this to me. You said that you would leave the unit once the mission was complete. Do not worry, this is a country of 'liberty'."_

"No." That definitely wasn't going to fly with Olga, "This is where I belong, with the unit. I have nowhere else to go." Olga pulled out her SOCOM pistol with her free hand and stared at it momentarily, "Father I want to stay and fight." She more or less pleaded.

"_There is no choice to make here Olga! Need I remind you that you are carrying my grandchild?"_

Olga holstered her gun and placed her hand on her stomach once the topic was brought up, without even saying a word about it.

"_You will be on the helicopter out of here, now!"_

The radio went silent and Olga just held it up without saying anything before just letting it lower to her side, "Damn it!" She looked up at the only helicopter still close to the ship, obviously waiting to descend or drop a line so that she could climb aboard per her father's orders. Olga merely waved it away, not willing to board. Besides, as long as it was still hovering about like a troublesome nanny she couldn't get Naruto to come back out to speak to him.

"Freeze!"

A gruff unfamiliar voice ordered her from behind. And here she thought the ship was secured. If it was Naruto sneaking up on her again he would have been more playful about it, 'Great, there's someone else other than Uzumaki that can get the drop on me…' Olga thought to herself.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – With Snake – The Bridge)

Snake had skulked his way through the upper levels of the U.S.S. Discovery mostly dodging the Russian invaders that had commandeered the ship. They were all over the place. There didn't seem to be a single place onboard that they hadn't touched yet. The corpses of the overwhelmed Marines that he routinely found in his path were evidence of that.

And on the bridge itself it seemed to be the highest concentration of unfortunate Marines as Snake saw half a dozen bodies on the floor, staining it with recently spilled blood from their fatal wounds.

There wasn't anything he could do about that however. He had his own problems to worry about at the moment, and starting a one man war on a tanker in the middle of the river wasn't a good idea when all he had was a tranquilizer pistol. Discretion would be his greatest weapon in this instance.

Hence he continued on with his mission. As Otacon had previously indicated as an objective, Snake made his way to the navigational computer and managed to dredge up the coordinates of the ship, "I'm looking at where the ship is headed right now." Snake reported as he activated his Codec, "35 degrees longitude, latitude around 58."

"_More than 500 miles off the coast of the Bermudas, out in the middle of the Atlantic… that means the prototype is ready for solo testing. It's basically combat worthy. That area is outside of the Second Fleet's operational range too. This must be a stand-alone Marine Corps project, which means this prototype Metal Gear must be designed for independent deployment, without any naval assistance."_ Otacon then realized that with the new information he had been given he had started to ramble, _"Err, anyway, analysis can wait until later. Snake you need to go down to the holds and locate the actual Metal-."_

Snake stopped paying attention when he heard a bump or a thump of some kind on the metal roof of the bridge. This directed his attention towards the front windows where he could see a woman pacing about while seemingly speaking on the radio outside in the rain. Drawing his pistol, he slipped outside while she had her back turned, the woman distracted by a rather heated conversation at the moment.

That was perfect as far as he was concerned. This allowed Snake to sneak up on her, but before he had her directly at gunpoint she ended the conversation and put up her radio. Seeing this as the only chance he would get, thinking that any attempt to get closer could risk alerting her prematurely, Snake took his chance, "Freeze!" As he had the gun pointed at her he refrained from creeping any closer, "Hands over your head! Now!"

Olga did as instructed making sure she held up her gun as well to show she didn't have another firearm on her, her face concealed under her hat and her back still turned to Snake.

"Toss your gun overboard! Slowly…" Snake finished with a low growl. As Olga did just as he ordered of her he crept around to her front to get a better look at her, "A woman? Show your face."

"You men really are all the same." Olga said calmly as she slowly pulled the hat from her head, slightly irritated that her only protection from the obnoxious rain was gone.

"Who are you?" Snake asked her, gun still ready for immediate fire if she tried anything funny.

"We are nomads. Wanderers." A casual flick of the wrist from Olga tossed her hat aside out of her grasp as it blew away in the storm. Seeing Snake's eyes momentarily wander at the lost accessory, Olga attempted to take a step, but he saw her muscles move.

"I said don't move!" Snake demanded tersely.

Olga shook her head in amusement, "Americans… so you shoot women too?" She knew for a fact that an American would shoot her from personal experience… but then again Naruto repeatedly urged that he was not American.

Snake smirked at her attempt to goad him or jab at his chivalry, "I'm a nomad too." He saw Olga chuckle noiselessly and took note of something else, "What else do you have there? Take the knife and toss it."

If it weren't so stormy out then Snake might have taken notice of the gleam in Olga's eye when he instructed her to do that. She slowly reached for the knife at her waist and drew it, one hand still in the air. After pulling it out she showed it to Snake and crouched down to lay it on the ground.

"Not there." Snake said, stopping her before it touched the ground, "Toss it overboard!" Olga rolled her eyes and stood back up straight where she had first been, "Hold that position. Now turn around."

"Someone seems to know what they're doing." Olga commented just before the rather brutal storm winds picked up and knocked the ship to the side, jolting Snake off balance, though he quickly recovered. With that wind the storm seemed to stop though, leaving the summer night clear, "It stopped raining…" Snake recovered his position and kept his gun trained on her, but she already had all of the time she needed to make her move, "Not too shabby is it? New York I mean?"

A flip of the knife placed the blade in Olga's hand and a rapid spin preceded her pointing the handle directly at Snake, firing a bullet from the bottom, one that Snake barely dodged by inches as it whizzed past his head.

The man's sudden motion allowed Olga to draw her second hidden gun from the back of her pants and take cover before he could return fire. Snake got back to a ready position as Olga's spent knife hit the ground with a clang, its use already done.

"And that brings our tour to its conclusion." Olga quipped rather boldly after freeing herself.

Snake was still pretty shaken up by almost getting taken down by a sneak attack that went down right in front of his face, "Scout knife with a surprise. Are you Spetsnaz?" He asked curiously, trying to figure out who was behind the assault that had been staged on the ship.

Olga hid behind the rather large structure covered in the tarp that was flowing in the wind of the returning storm, "I think you deserve some credit. No one's ever dodged that shot of mine… but your score is still lower than _his_, you didn't hit me back the way he did." She said, tracing the faint scar on her face, the only remnant from her first battle with Naruto, "But no one gets lucky twice either." With that she rushed from behind her cover and quickly fired at the peeking head of Snake, missing him as he slipped back behind cover, 'He's fast too…'

Snake moved his body to return fire, but Olga had already nimbly moved back to her own cover behind a stack of crates. He growled at the slow firing rate of his weapon, even for a semi-automatic pistol, 'Yeah, I'm really going to hit her at this rate.' Was the sarcastic thought from the grizzled old soldier.

"Whoever you are, you aren't stopping us." Olga said, ducking down as a return shot ricocheted off of her cover. At that point, the storm blew the tarp off of the structure, revealing it to be another set of shelves and placing the lights shining brightly directly towards Snake. With a devious thought spawned from the mind of having fought Naruto in the past and how he used the battlefield itself as a weapon, Olga fired at one of the lights to force it to shine directly in Snake's line of sight, putting the advantage further in her hands.

An attempt at that point to look at the lovely femme fatale nearly burned Snake's pupils out of his head from the intense light and he averted his eyes as he ducked behind cover again, 'Well someone knows how to fight using the elements.' He popped his head over a crate and ducked back down to avoid anymore gunfire from Olga, 'To hell with this.' Having memorized the position of the lights, Snake quickly jumped up and took the spotlights out with a pair of shots to even the playing field so to speak.

"Really now?" Olga said, pulling a grenade out and tossing it at Snake's position. Once he saw the grenade land he dove from cover and Olga fired at him, grazing his calf with the bullet and missing him with the explosion of the grenade altogether, "Damn."

Snake rolled back to his feet from his dive and fired a shot at Olga that hit her directly in the shoulder with a tranquilizer dart. Olga gasped at the projectile sticking out of her body, 'He's not aiming to kill me? No, it's more like he has no other weapons.' Her gun was far better than his, if he had anything different then he would have switched it over by now. Even so, she could still feel the tranquilizer beginning to work as her movements seemed to slow up.

Slightly groggy, Olga attempted to fire at Snake as he ducked from behind a crate to hide behind a shelf filled with equipment. Despite it being his only weapon it was plenty effective in wearing her down as he took another shot at her when she tried taking cover again. This time Snake didn't even bother hiding again, unwilling to continue playing cat and mouse with her now that the shoe was on the other foot and was prepared to fire once more to put her to sleep as she took to leaning against the railing to stay upright, however a glow from behind him set off a warning to roll out of the way before a trio of bullets comprised of light could hit him.

Snake rolled back to his feet and turned himself around to aim in the direction the shots had come from, but saw nothing there. He turned back towards Olga and saw someone holding onto her bridal style, a man wearing the complete Gurlukovich Mercenary uniform without gloves, the rappelling harness, or the AKS-74u.

"Do you always get into trouble like this when I'm in the area?" The masked man whispered to Olga as her eyes were fluttering open and shut, a sign that she was trying to fight to stay awake.

A smile came to the drowsy woman's face as she recognized the voice of the person that was holding onto her, "You're just bad luck for everyone aren't you Uzumaki?" She said softly, dropping her gun before shutting her eyes all the way, "Shalashaka is here…" Was the last thing she managed to get out before drifting off, despite her best attempt to stay conscious.

The disguised Naruto stared at her before letting out a sigh of relief once he realized that she was just sleeping due to the darts in her arm and the back of her neck. He picked the darts out and tossed them aside.

Snake was shoot first, ask questions later especially once he saw the man in the Gurlukovich Mercenary uniform come to Olga's aid. He fired a shot but was shocked when the man didn't even move, he just took the dart in the back.

Naruto felt the shot and stood straight up with Olga still in his arms. He turned around to face Snake and the stare of rather cold blue eyes met the stern return glare of the experienced warrior.

'Why didn't this guy go down yet?' Snake thought due to the fact that he couldn't tell that it was Naruto because of the disguise, 'I know I didn't hit him anywhere vital, but it's been ten seconds. Something should have happened by now. Shit, if these don't work then I don't have another weapon that can put him down.'

'I go inside, find unconscious Gurlukovich Mercs, steal a uniform from one of them so I can talk to Olga in peace about the fact that some of her men are unconscious, and I find this guy putting her to sleep.' Naruto thought to himself, 'Okay, someone's about to take an asskicking.' Snake had changed greatly in appearance since the last time Naruto had seen him, he didn't recognize him in the rain and the dark… the fact that he was 'slightly' upset about Olga going down wasn't helping matters either.

"Who are you?" Snake demanded, knowing at this point that he was going to have to fight this man as well. At least he could get to know the man he was about to shoot at.

'I am _not_ wasting all of my Solar Gun shots on this guy.' Naruto thought, thinking of his first move to make. As he thought, Snake fired another shot with his tranquilizer Beretta and Naruto turned his body to take the dart on his arm instead of risking it hitting Olga again, 'Do tranquilizer darts mess with pregnancies? She was only hit with two though.'

'What is this guy?' Snake wondered right before Naruto rushed right towards him. Snake dove away, but Naruto wasn't trying to attack him, he was just trying get past him to put Olga inside of the bridge, 'He's obviously an ally to these Russian soldiers, but who the hell are they?' He held his gun at the ready as Naruto walked back outside into the rain seemingly not caring that there was a gun being pointed at him at all.

Three more shots were fired at Naruto and he made absolutely no effort to block them as they stuck in his chest. Behind the balaclava, Naruto gave Snake an 'are you serious' look just wiping his hand down his chest and plucking out the darts before rushing directly at Snake. Naruto's hand was placed on the top of the gun before Snake could put the weapon away and prepare to fight. A short motion of the elbow and Naruto shoved the barrel of the gun out of his direction, forcing Snake's desperation attack to miss.

A follow-through spinning elbow from Naruto hit home though and sent Snake stumbling back against the railing, still holding onto his gun luckily despite the fact that it was already shown that this man was untranquable.

Naruto jumped through the air with an axe kick that Snake dodged, allowing Naruto's heel to slam down on the metal railing and utterly wreck it with brute force. Snake tucked his gun away and swept Naruto's grounded foot out from under him. The ever-nimble former shinobi merely saw this as an inconvenience as he utilized one of his arms to handspring through and land back on his feet.

A still mostly grounded Snake shot a higher kick at the upright Naruto that he blocked and in retaliation, Naruto kicked the downed Snake across his back, sending him sliding across the wet navigation deck, his body stopping by hitting a crate. Not missing a beat, Snake jumped right back to his feet set in a hand-to-hand stance and ready to continue, 'Regular grunts don't fight like that.' Naruto feigned a stutter step and saw Snake commit to react to him. With a smirk on his face under the mask, Naruto changed his approach mid-step and came at Snake from a different angle than he was expecting, 'And they're definitely not that fast!'

Stars of pain flashed in Snake's eyes as the speedy Naruto delivered a vicious punch right to his face that sent him head over heels over the crate he had gotten himself back to his feet so quickly with the assistance of. Snake fell on top of his head but rolled through, however there was no such thing as a fair fight on the battlefield and Naruto shoved the crate forward with a push kick that wound up hitting Snake in the face just as he started standing up.

'I haven't been on the attack once since the fight started!' Snake stopped stumbling just as his opponent leapt onto the crate he had just kicked to pounce at Snake with another punch. Snake was ready for this however as he braced himself and caught the punch, though he could feel the bones in his hand screaming in protest of the action, 'That hurt even with the sneaking suit increasing all of my body mechanics! What's he made of, diamond?' At least he had the bastard in a position to slow him down now.

Naruto took a backhand punch to the face with Snake's free hand, a kick to the body that elicited a grunt from him, and a fist to the stomach. Still, Snake had him in his grip, but he was about to pay for it though. With his own free hand, Naruto made a half-ram seal and gathered his chakra for a nasty surprise.

Electricity suddenly surged through Snake's body once Naruto made that weird motion with his hand. He let out a jumbled yell as his muscles spasmed from the shock he took and he let Naruto go involuntarily as he could see electricity surging off of Naruto's body. Weird powers and brutal hand-to-hand skills that focused on speed… that seemed very familiar.

Naruto's left hand started building up more chakra to take advantage of the temporarily disabled Snake to put an end to the fight once and for all. The familiar blue orb of chakra began spinning rapidly in his hand and he brought it forward, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"

The specialized suit of Snake mitigated the damage he took, even from Naruto's shocking defense tactic, but the shout of the next attack and the bright blue spinning ball of energy brought him back to seeing the exact same attack two years ago, "Naruto!" Snake jumped back as hard as he could to keep the Rasengan from slamming into his chest. He saw what that attack could do to machinery, he didn't want to see what it could do to him personally.

Hearing someone he had never met say his name raised Naruto's hackles. For the past two years he had done a very good job of making sure no one in the field could identify him by name and this man seemed to know him, "You know me?"

Snake could see that Naruto was willing to listen, though he was still on the defensive in some way, "Yeah kid, it's me Snake. Long time, no see huh?"

Naruto's eyes widened but he began scrutinizing Snake's appearance. It _was_ Snake, but he looked different from the last time, older… man that smoking must have made him age rather badly, "Snake? What happened to you, you look like you need a long nap."

"We can't all be bursting with youthful exuberance now can we kid?" Snake shot back.

With a sigh, Naruto pulled off his wet balaclava and shucked aside his disguise now that the only reason he even meant to wear it for was officially a nonfactor. This left him back in his own dark green sneaking suit with his sword and other supplies now visible again, "Rasengan was a dead giveaway huh? Yo… nice to see you again I guess."

"Why are you here?"

"Why are _you _here?"

Snake let out a growl of impatience at Naruto's parroted question, "Don't play around here kid. I know it was you that took down the Metal Gear in Japan. So are you here because you hunt the Metal Gear derivatives too?" Naruto shook his head, "Then why are you here?"

"It's complicated." Naruto said with a small smile on his face, "I'm here because of someone that I care about very much asking for my help. That's all." Naruto jumped over Snake and landed on the roof of the bridge, surprising Snake since it seemed that Naruto had improved since the last time they met, "So here's the drill Solid Snake, we're not really enemies, but we don't really want the same thing here either. Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours. Everyone's happy and no one goes home in a pine box." With his needed bit said, Naruto jumped off of the roof of the bridge all the way over the railing of the deck to a lower level.

Snake ran over to the railing Naruto had just jumped over like it was nothing. Was he crazy or just stupid to take a fall like that? But once he looked, he saw no trace whatsoever of Naruto or which way he might have gone, "I hate ninjas…" He then put his hand to his ear to contact Otacon, "Otacon… we've got another little wrinkle here." He walked over to where Olga dropped her gun and took it for himself before turning to the bridge where he could no longer see Olga's unconscious body inside, and then he remembered one of Naruto's other little tricks, the duplication move, "Yeah I _really_ hate ninjas."

* * *

><p><strong>Well here you go, another chapter fresh for you. I hope you enjoyed.<strong>

**I've not got anything smart-alecky or even mildly entertaining to say, so I'm going to go enjoy my day off old-school style; with copious amounts of sleeping… and possibly some beef jerky if I can feel motivated enough to get up and get some later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	19. The Wool Over Your Eyes

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Maybe in my recently concussed state of mind when the knee hit my head the fourth or fifth time I believed that I did own either or for a moment, but upon losing consciousness these thoughts went the way of my state of awareness.

**Chapter 19: The Wool Over Your Eyes**

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><p>"<em>You saw him?"<em> Otacon's voice came over Snake's Codec in disbelief, _"He's here and you actually fought with him for a bit? Naruto Uzumaki, the same guy from Shadow Moses?"_

"Yeah…" Snake said, still trying to shake off the sensation of having volts of electricity run through his body, "Apparently getting kicked in his little piss pump off of a scaffold by Liquid two years ago made him really not want to lose a fistfight again because he certainly stepped his game up." The electricity was certainly a new touch. Was it the suit he was wearing underneath his disguise as a mercenary? Because he didn't see how it conducted electricity.

"_What's he doing here? Is he here to expose the new Metal Gear too? Or is he here to destroy it?"_

Snake wiped the water off of his face as he still stood out in the rain, "I don't know. He said he was here to help someone close to him and that we weren't really enemies. Then he told me to stay out of his way and he jumped off of the navigational deck."

"_He what? That fall is like a-."_

"I know how high it is." Snake said, cutting his support team member off, "More bad news. The girl is gone. The Olga woman that I just fought, he put her inside the bridge beforehand and she's gone now. I got her gun though. USP. It's in really good condition." Now he just needed to find some 9mm ammunition for it and he was golden. Naruto might be able to shrug off tranquilizer darts from the M9, but a bullet would probably still make him flinch. Flinch right to the ground in anguish. _If_ they had to fight again that is.

"_I know who they are, the group of mercenaries that have taken the ship. We've ID'd the old man as Sergei Gurlukovich."_

"One of Ocelot's allies?" The man that Ocelot was supposed to meet up with after the conclusion of the Shadow Moses incident had that not gone straight to hell for FOXHOUND, "And they want Metal Gear…"

"_Everything has changed. This isn't going to be as simple as we thought."_

That much was obvious. Snake still had work to do. But before he could begin making his way down to the hold where the new Metal Gear was situated the sound of a low hum made its way to his ears. He looked up and around only to see a white hovering device with a camera on it looking down at him before suddenly taking off.

With no bullets in his actual gun Snake couldn't try to shoot at it even if it hadn't been moving as fast as it had been, thus it got away effortlessly, "A Cypher… fuck. We're under surveillance, and it's not by the Marines either, it's the Army." Marines, Russians, Army, and whatever the hell Naruto Uzumaki was. What a party.

Otacon went silent but the Codec didn't go off to signify the end of the conversation, meaning that there was still something to be said, _"Snake I have a confession to make. We didn't dig up the information on this new Metal Gear on our own… not like usual."_

Great, that didn't sound good either, "How did you find out then?" Snake asked with an edge in his tone. If Otacon didn't feel like bringing it up beforehand then it obviously wasn't someone Snake trusted.

"_It was an anonymous tip."_

"You've never trusted those, why would you start now?"

"_I have a younger sister, a stepsister. We have different parents."_ Yes Otacon, that's what a step-sibling is, there was no need for him to explain that to Snake, _"I only knew her for two years."_

"So what?" Snake wondered aloud, "You've never mentioned her before. Why does it matter now?"

"_The sender of the tip was E.E. Her name was Emma, but I always called her E.E. It just caught my eye you know? I thought it was just a coincidence, but I couldn't get it out of my mind. There's no one out there who really knows about her."_

Freaking bleeding heart Otacon. Oh, he couldn't blame him for the way he was. He was a product of his environment the way that Snake was a product of his. All he could do was try to relate to his partner, "When was the last time you saw her?"

"_Over ten years ago."_

"It could be a trap to lure us out here."

"_I don't know. After I got the tip I broke into the Pentagon's system to get confirmation. Watch your back though Snake. Maybe I screwed up."_

Well it had been far too long since something screwy happened to them anyway so maybe they were due for a clusterfuck of the highest magnitude. It had been two years since Snake thought that the entire world was against him, what better time for that than now?

"I'll be careful." Snake assured Otacon as he began to head back inside the bridge to try making his way down to the hold of the ship to locate the new Metal Gear that had been designed by the Marines.

XxX

(With Naruto – Tanker Interior)

Getting down from the navigational deck was rather easy. He had only needed to subdue one or two on his way through the ship. Snake had been rather thorough with his ridding the halls of sentries on his way up to the bridge, even if all he had was a tranquilizer gun to move through the ship with. Speaking of which, those stupid things got Naruto groggy. How many did he get hit with?

But once he started trying to work his way down to the lowest levels he hit something of a snag. He rather hated the blatant traps that people would tend to set. They tended to be a little too destructive for his tastes.

"Oh my Kami…" Naruto mumbled out as he stood crouched in front of lasers connected to a mass of Semtex that lined both sides of a corridor towards a door. On all of the explosive setups there was a control panel set on them. He truly felt like palming his face at what he was looking at, "Damn it Olga, were you going to blow the whole damn ship sky high after your dad got the Metal Gear out of here?"

Okay, he could officially go back to Colonel Jackson and say that he had actually accomplished his 'terrorist' mission once he told the man about the absurd amounts of Semtex he had found in multiple places on the interior of the ship. All he had to do was say that he planted it and threatened them.

Where was Johnny when he needed him? He'd have him defusing that crap all day long if he were there. He himself wasn't about to touch it with a ten-foot pole because he wasn't one for stopping explosions, more for creating them. With his luck if he even tried to touch it the whole ship would go up prematurely and kill them all in a massive fireball in the Hudson.

That was what he _didn't_ want to happen. So he couldn't kill any of the Marines, not that he had seen any due to the Gurlukovich Mercenaries taking over the ship, and he couldn't kill any of the aforementioned mercenaries due to a request from Olga. Not only that, but he had to hang out on that ship until he found an opening to take the Metal Gear down before Sergei got bold enough to go for it and take it.

Fine, he couldn't hang out in the ship's upper levels, he had to get to the reason for the season so to speak. He needed to get down to that massive bipedal tank of death and find a way to destroy it without killing everybody in the massive explosion that would have to take place in order to eradicate the damnable weapon.

But first he had to get past the cacophony of lasers that would trigger the Semtex to get through. Naruto made a trio set of hand-seals to try to mold his chakra in the appropriate manner. Forming a fist, he clenched it tightly to circulate the electricity to his hand before extending one finger surging with the power. He took a few breaths to calm himself in order to steady his hand. He needed good control and aim so that all he hit were the control panels to knock them out of whack. Doing so would reset them and deactivate the motion detecting lasers and would allow him to pass freely.

Hopefully he had worked his control down to the point where he could use it as a rudimentary burst attack. The last time he tried to use his electricity with the least bit of precision he was shooting off random jolts like a Tesla coil. It was completely unreliable and uncontrollable, even with basic directionary actions.

With the painful thoughts of the last time he tried to shoot electricity in mind, Naruto let the flow of chakra cease and instead switched over to the Solar Gun. With no sunlight to recharge with in a rainstorm, setting aside the fact that he was indoors, he had to make his shots count. Hopefully if he missed with the light projectiles the blunt damage they wrought wouldn't cause an explosion from the volatile Semtex.

Three barely charged shots right on the money and the field of lasers fell. Making the special weapon a part of his suit certainly helped with the control and recoil aspect since his entire arm was used to control it.

He sighed to himself as he walked towards the door to begin opening it. Olga was really out of it. Snake's tranquilizers were really good stuff and kept her under so he just set her in the crew's lounge on a couch. One of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries would find her there and that would be that, she'd be fine. Hopefully he'd be done by the time she woke up and he'd call her later about it.

After popping the door open and looking down the dark passage, Naruto bounced lightly on his toes before taking off in a soundless sprint down the corridor. Upon reaching each bulkhead he lightly hopped over them and continued along his way. A complication almost arose when a patrolling Gurlukovich Mercenary strayed into Naruto's field of vision down the way.

He wasn't an attentive soldier though… because he was listening to an MP3 player and dancing while watching over his part of the ship. It felt too good as far as Naruto was concerned to deliver a kick to the man's head, knocking him out cold for his negligence. It better have been a good song worth getting kicked in the temple over.

Looking back at his recent K.O., Naruto went back along his way until back where he had just knocked out his adversary he heard Russian talking and the sound of a radio going up. As he reached the last door before the hold area of the tanker, a door a little ways back opened up and mercenaries spilled out to check where the previous attack had taken place. He had just set off an alert among the infiltrating Russian soldiers.

'Oh well.' Naruto thought to himself as he went through the door leading to the hold, 'They aren't looking for me, and it's not my problem. They can run around like rats all they want as long as they don't find me.' What was the worst consequence that could happen? Really, it wasn't like they'd run into him or something. They were going the wrong way.

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Snake – Darkened Corridor)

Taking cover on the wall side of one bulkhead, Snake had his USP at the ready as bullets ricocheted through the hall. He didn't know what the hell happened. One moment he was slipping through the corridor rather easily, although he did find that all of the other exits back up to the deck were sealed and he found that strange, but the next minute he was stuck in a firefight with a small squad of Gurlukovich Mercenaries.

At that moment one of the soldiers over pursued while advancing on Snake's position and he fired three shots at his back, dropping him to the ground dead. Another one that was following made his way through the bulkhead and saw his comrade fall. Upon hearing the shots that felled his fellow soldier he turned to face Snake, pointing his weapon his way only for Snake to quickly grab him and use him as a human shield as he moved into the doorway and fired his handgun, taking down three other soldiers.

"Please don't kill me." The final man standing, the one in Snake's grasp said shakily.

Snake shrugged in response, "Well since you asked so nicely-." And with that he slammed the man's head into the metal of the bulkhead, knocking him unconscious. There, problem solved. And now he could move along to the hold. Still he had to ask the question, "How the hell did they know I was here?" He said quietly to himself as he continued to move along.

Eventually he reached a door at the far end of the hall and left to find his own way to the hold.

After a while a straggler of the investigative crew of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries entered the corridor skittishly. Shutting the door behind him he heard the jangle of spurs that prompted him to turn suddenly, pointing his automatic weapon at the potential threat, "Who goes there?"

Instead of outright attacking the man the way an intruder would, the calm footsteps just kept coming further until the person came into view. Cowboy boots, an old-style duster, and revolvers in belt holsters, the tell-tale signatures of one person in particular.

"Oh, Shalashaska." The man said in relief, glad that he wasn't being confronted by an enemy, "Why are you here? We thought you were with the Colonel." Without saying a word, Ocelot whipped a revolver out and held it up at the man's head, "What the-?" One shot to the head and in a spray of blood the man fell backwards dead, his body thudding off of the metal ground.

A showy series of gun-spinning tricks accompanied the death knell as Ocelot nonchalantly walked over to the door the young soldier had just emerged from. Turning the hatch shut tight to seal the exit to the deck he then turned and made his way deeper into the ship, towards the hold of course, "The Colonel will be joining you soon… comrade."

XxX

(With Naruto – Hold of Tanker)

Naruto stood on a balcony overlooking the lower area and it was a good thing he was up and out of the way because below on the ground stood well over one hundred Marines standing in formation and looking at a screen with a man speaking on it, someone that was probably the head honcho of this whole setup and someone that Naruto could swear he had seen somewhere before. That was neither here nor there and he could try to stick a name with the face later. He had work to do to get to the new Metal Gear and he couldn't let his mind wander at the moment.

Poor Marines down below didn't know that the ship had been taken over by the skilled Russian mercenaries. And he couldn't tip them off without getting riddled with shells by the men he would try to warn, or without betraying Olga, neither of which were appealing options.

So the only thing he could do was merely move along and attempt to end this before any large-scale bloodshed could take place. That Semtex placed all over… he doubted that the Marines set such a trap on their own ship. Sergei Gurlukovich was probably going to blow the ship after he took what he wanted. They would be out at sea by then, away from scrutinizing eyes.

As a matter of fact they were probably at sea at the moment. They had been sailing down the Hudson River for quite some time.

Needing to get a move on, Naruto stuck himself to the wall and crawled his way up it carefully to shroud himself in the shadows of the ceiling. He could see another balcony all the way on the other side of the room with a door leading to another portion of the hold. Since he didn't see any giant machine of total annihilation in the current room he had to assume it was there or somewhere further. There was only so much ship to check for something that was presumably huge.

Why give them this whole huge speech anyway? Maybe to make a big deal out of these men being front and center for the new biggest, baddest Metal Gear to date? Shouldn't that have been a big deal in the first place? From the screenshots Naruto could see as he crawled across the ceiling he could see that if nothing else it was just as huge as REX was, and looked very sleek to boot.

Eventually he made his way to the other balcony and prepared to drop down to the elevated position, soundlessly hitting his feet on it and looking out over the attentive Marines that were paying attention to the Commandant, someone Naruto finally recognized as Scott Dolph, 'Holy crap that's Colonel Jackson's father-in-law!' That was where he knew him from. Small world.

He had not only known of him due to that fact, but also due to egregious rumors that found the man at the center. Most specifically that Vamp was his lover… despite the fact that he was supposed to be married. Naruto honestly could have gone his entire life without being forced to contemplate something like that especially involving someone he knew, and he wasn't about to ask a single soul outside of those who told him (Fatman and Chinaman) in order to confirm it. He didn't need or wish to know. It could have been a joke, but why in the hell would they tell him that even as a joke?

Either way Commandant Dolph was heading up the new Metal Gear project. And according to the speech the new machine went by the name Metal Gear RAY.

Looking over the rest of the hold, he could see someone sneaking out from the door across the way he had used to enter and he grinned at the sight of the person being Snake. Hopefully what he was there for wasn't going to clash in any way with Snake's objective as he didn't have anything against him.

Taking his eyes off of the older soldier, Naruto moved through the door into the next section of the hold where he stopped cold. Metal Gear Ray was firmly in his view and he had a picture-perfect view of it from a front/side angle.

It had a tri-sectional mouth that probably housed some kind of weapon and looked to have aquatic capabilities due to the fact that its two arms were fins, though they were fit with machine guns. There was a tail on its backside along with a missile pod on its back and the very maneuverable reverse-jointed legs were equipped with missile pods for ground defense.

It looked alive. It even seemed like it had a face. REX was scarier just off of sheer initial appearance, but RAY had the potential to be terrifying based off of the direct combat potential capabilities it seemed to possess. Even for all his speed that was able to prevent REX from keeping him in view, if he had to fight RAY he didn't think he'd have the same chance. That was one mobile looking piece of machinery.

This room not only had the massive RAY on display, it had a large amount of Marines in there as well, dozens, in addition to Commandant Dolph himself, the man standing on a stage in front of RAY giving his speech to the men in front of him and the cameras being aimed at him.

'What am I going to do to get rid of this thing?' Naruto thought to himself, taking a moment to ponder what he was going to do. They couldn't just hang around down there in the hold forever could they? So once they left he could try to blow it up and decrease casualties. But what about the Gurlukovich Mercenaries? Going up against upwards of 100 armed Marines wasn't a good idea, but they had to have some kind of plan to get Metal Gear RAY out of there. Perhaps they would open the hold out to the deck and lift it out somehow, but once again how?

He didn't think he had enough explosives with him to take that thing down, but maybe if he found weak spots or maybe the cockpit. There was always a way to take anything down.

And as he thought about this, Dolph finished his speech down below.

An African-American man wearing camouflage fatigues and a cap stood in front of his Marines and concluded his long-winded dialogue. It had to have lasted over several minutes, "We the Marines… will lead the charge into a new world order with Metal Gear RAY." He let the silence of the situation soak in with the men before ending it, "That is all! Dismissed!"

The Marines all then immediately saluted the Commandant and he in return did the same to them as the cameras went off ending the transmission to the other rooms.

The deafening silence of the room was broken by footsteps behind the Commandant's stage on RAY's platform, getting Dolph to turn around abruptly to face the noise.

"Excellent speech my friend."

The sound of spurs jangling seemed strange to him, but he faced it nonetheless, "Who the hell?"

"Gift of the silver tongue." Ocelot said as he walked from behind one of the legs of the hulking RAY, "They say it's the mark of a good officer… and of a liar." He turned to face Commandant Dolph without fear of the matter, "Americans are too in love with the sound of their own voice to speak the truth."

Without even a verbal command from their leader the Marines in the room swarmed the stage and pointed their assault rifles at Ocelot just waiting on the command to fire on him, "Identify yourself." Dolph ordered.

Ocelot gestured grandiosely as was his way whenever he introduced himself, "I am Shalashaska. Also called; Revolver Ocelot!"

"Son of a bitch." Naruto grumbled to himself as he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up finally getting to see the bastard again after two years. Now he wished Sniper Wolf was there… or at least that he himself had something to hit that bastard at a distance. Maybe he could make the Marines open fire on him? That would sure solve that problem.

The Marines all made to move forward before a sweeping arm gesture from Dolph kept them from doing so. Paying the grunts no mind, Ocelot turned to look at RAY, seemingly impressed by its design, "What do you want?" Dolph asked, "I doubt you came all the way into a guarded and disguised tanker by accident or just to gawk at the weapon."

Beginning to walk towards Dolph and the Marines barring him from being exposed to the potential threat, Ocelot pointed up, "This machine will be quite useful."

"What are you planning to do, steal this thing?" Dolph said sarcastically.

'Yes.' Naruto thought to himself dryly. _He'd_ steal it if he knew how to drive it, of course Ocelot would.

"Steal?" Ocelot said as if he were offended by the wording, "No, no, I'm simply taking it back." He was more or less the reason RAY was created in the first place as it was an anti-Metal Gear weapon and he had leaked Metal Gear specs to the world, so he technically was taking it back one could argue.

As all of the attention was directed on Ocelot, it left an opening for Sergei Gurlukovich to get behind Dolph and hold a gun to his head, making him a hostage. The action got the Marines' attention, but it was too late and the man was caught by the Russian.

Damn it, why did Olga's dad have to be such a pain? And where did he come from? He had some moves on him, but Naruto supposed that Olga had to get it from somewhere. Naruto drew a small throwing knife and held it at the ready. He could hit Sergei in the wrist and disable his ability to shoot, then he could try and take down Ocelot. Maybe he could if Ocelot wasn't put on guard by his first move. Either way the Marines would retaliate to the abrupt action and Ocelot would be caught in a murderous fire. Yeah, that was a good enough plan to nip this in the bud.

"Nobody move!" Ocelot ordered, keeping the Marines from doing anything rash to try freeing their leader. He held up a detonator for all to see, "This ship now carries enough Semtex on its key structural points to blow it right out of the water at a mere touch of this button." At hearing that, the Marines backed away from Ocelot and Sergei reluctantly, "That's right… no one has to die needlessly."

Right then, multiple Gurlukovich Mercenaries rappelled down from the ceiling and took positions all around the Marines, pointing their weapons at them to keep them in place.

"We're almost at the target." Ocelot said informatively, "Get a move on." At his behest, more mercenaries began unhooking RAY from its restraints to keep it where it was safely on its platform.

Dolph watched the Russian soldiers steadily at work with a sneer on his face, "What do you intend to do with RAY, sell it on the streets?" He said to Sergei derisively.

Sergei just held the gun tighter to his head, "I was raised in Snezhinsk, formerly known as Chelyabinsk-70, the nuclear research outpost. After the Cold War ended, my home was bought out by the Americans."

"Is there a point to this sad story?" Dolph said in an almost bored tone.

"Not that you would understand." Sergei said dangerously, offended at the uncaring attitude of his captive, "Land, friends, dignity, all sold to the highest bidder; the United States of America." He let out a disgusted scoff, "Even the technology that gave birth to these weapons is Russian, developed by us! But Russia will rise again, and RAY is the key!"

His monologue was cut off by a few chuckles from Ocelot that got his attention, "I regret to inform you old friend that I have no intention of selling Metal Gear. As I said, I've come to take it back." Ocelot walked past the Gurlukovich men that were keeping the Marines held at a standoff of sorts, eliciting confusion from them. Wasn't he on their side? Sergei's oldest comrade? He had to be joking, "Yes… returned to The Patriots!"

The Patriots.

Naruto's teeth slammed shut so hard he swore he almost broke them, "What the fuck is going on? They want this thing too? I can't let them do that!' Was this his chance? Maybe he could take RAY and threaten to spread its specs the way Ocelot did with REX to get himself some leverage over them. He didn't know, he'd work that out later, but for now he could keep a piece out of their hands here and now. How could he get it though?

Dolph seemed to know of them too as he looked shocked at the revelation, "The La-li-lu-le-lo!" The what? That was weird, was that another alias for them? It seemed easier to just say The Patriots as far as Naruto was concerned, "How is that even possible?" Before he could step forward to question Ocelot further, Sergei kept a tighter grip on him, gun still to his head.

Things were slipping out of control for the Gurlukovich Colonel, "Ocelot, have you sold us out!" He spat in anger and disgust.

"I was never in your employ Gurlukovich." Ocelot quipped matter-of-factly.

"Are you still in league with Solidus?" Sergei asked.

Ocelot merely ignored him, his back turned to everyone, even the angry Russian man that could shoot him in the back if he so desired. He did still have the detonator with him though, "No hard feelings Colonel. Mother Russia can rot for all I care."

"Since when Ocelot?" Sergei demanded to know, "When did you turn?"

"Someone's sure attentive." Ocelot said sarcastically, "You're about forty years too late for any suspicions. I abandoned her during the Cold War. Sorry if you ever thought we really had anything in common with your goals and all." He then let out a cruel laugh, "Metal Gear only has room for one I'm afraid. Gurlukovich, you and your daughter will die here."

"Damn you!" Sergei shoved Commandant Dolph forward towards Ocelot hard as a form of cover while he trained his gun on Ocelot, "Die you dog!"

In one motion, Ocelot threw his duster to the side and quickly drew his revolver, turning to coldly and accurately shoot down both Dolph and Sergei before his fellow Russian could even get off a single shot. Both men fell to the ground with respective mortal shouts of pain.

Naruto's eyes widened in shock, 'Did he get even faster with those stupid things? I barely even saw him draw!' He never even saw him manually cock the hammer back either and yet he fired multiple shots as if he had a modern semi-automatic. Old people weren't supposed to get _better _at fighting, not like that, but Ocelot had to compensate for his possible decreased agility somehow… though Naruto doubted that had even fallen over the last two years.

"Sergei!" Ocelot said, the still smoking barrel of his gun pointed at the fallen pair, "Looks like you were long overdue for retirement." The half-dozen Grulukovich Mercenaries around Ocelot had to take a moment to analyze what had just happened since it had occurred so fast, but when they finally did and turned their guns on Ocelot he had already pulled out his second revolver and shot them all down consecutively.

'What am I going to do?' Naruto thought to himself. Jumping down there wouldn't solve a single thing. It would only get him into hot water.

"Show's over!" Ocelot yelled to the Marines and other Gurlukovich Mercenaries in that room of the hold, "If you wish to live I suggest you run now. This ship is still in the lower New York Harbor. You may yet make it to shore if you swim for your life." And with that warning, Ocelot hit the button on his detonator and blew the charges on the ship, rocking the vessel again and again from the blasts.

The damaged walls of the hull in a matter of seconds had water pouring in, knocking soldiers to the ground and quickly beginning to fill the hold. An angry Naruto was still high out of the way though on the balcony where he could see Ocelot walking towards RAY's cockpit.

Naruto stood up and ran towards the spot where his balcony would meet with the catwalk Ocelot was taking to reach the cockpit. With the confusion he would never have a better chance to grab him than right then, even if the ship was sinking around him all the while. He jumped up on the railing of his balcony, his hand on the HF Blade as he prepared to jump at Ocelot and cut him down before he could wonder what hit him.

A stroke of good fortune would have been the perfect jump following the first movement, ending with him cleaving off Ocelot's other gun hand the way Gray Fox had at Shadow Moses and capturing the slimy old soldier. But Snake's tranquilizers slowed his movements even if it hadn't been a factor before. Ocelot was no foot-lackey, and he had been caught off guard by someone utilizing Naruto's method of attack before, back when he wasn't attentive during his years past duel with Snake. People like that tended to learn their lessons.

"I'm not letting you ninja-types sneak up on me twice!" Ocelot shouted out, drawing a reloaded revolver and pointing it directly at Naruto who shifted from preparing to attack to holding his sword up in preparation for the shots that would have no doubt been coming right his way. A grin found its way to Ocelot's mustached face at the sight of the young man, "Kid! It's been too long. How are you holding up? Do you like being The Patriots' gofer? You should be used to it seeing as how you used to be FOXHOUND's right?"

"So you knew about that?" Naruto asked in a low growl, able to feel his anger rising at the fact that _this_ guy was referencing such a thing about him, "Don't worry. I'm looking for a better opportunity in the near future and I think I've found it right here in RAY. I think I'll take it. Consider it my 30-day's notice."

"About that." Ocelot said with a grin on his face, "It was rather lucky that you showed up here. We were only expecting one special guest tonight. But since you're here, I have to say that it's been deemed your services are no longer required. You've served your use already, it'll make a far more convincing story with the two of you."

"What?" Naruto asked, preparing to get his answers once and for all, even at the cost of dodging a few bullets from the deadeye shot.

"Ocelot!"

As luck would have it though, Snake appeared on the stage below, water trying to rise up to his level as he pointed his USP at Ocelot.

Upon seeing Snake, Ocelot put one hand on his head as if he were in pain and trying to fight something. Standing on his feet he began to spasm as if a seizure were taking him over. Well something took over, even if it wasn't a seizure. In his epileptic fit he pulled off the glove and right sleeve of his outfit revealing an arm that was discolored compared to his own, "It's been a while brother." Ocelot said derisively to Snake.

"And who are you supposed to be?" Snake asked suspiciously.

"You know who I am." Ocelot said, flexing out his right arm and hand. Though his voice sounded like Ocelot's there was a tinge of an accent in it. An accent neither of them had heard in two years.

Snake's eyebrows raised up underneath his headband, "Liquid?"

Only one of Naruto's did the same as he cocked it curiously, "No… that's Ocelot Snake. I killed Liquid. Ocelot's just going senile."

Ocelot's eyes turned towards Naruto as the gun was still pointed at the young blonde and he smirked in a very smug manner, "Hello there Naruto. You certainly look tired my boy. It doesn't fit you to be quite honest." He let out a few chuckles and shook his head, still using Liquid's accent, loud and arrogant, "I wonder how much of yourself you left behind at Shadow Moses."

"I thought he left _you_ behind at Shadow Moses Liquid." Snake said, narrowing his eyes on the seemingly possessed Ocelot.

Ocelot's eyes went down to Snake, mirth seemingly dancing through his eyes, "Ah, not so young anymore, eh Snake? You're drowning in time. I know what it's like brother. No wonder Naomi passed you over for the FOXDIE program's effects. You look half past dead as is." Before he could even enjoy the fruits of his taunt, Ocelot's right arm began to violently spasm about as he seemed to be internally fighting with himself, "Get… out! Get out of my mind Liquid!" A spastic shot came from the embattled man that flew Naruto's way, forcing him to jump backwards away from him as he blocked the shot.

"Kid what's going on?" Snake asked Naruto, yelling up to him.

"How should I know? I haven't seen either one of you in years!" Naruto replied as Ocelot let out a loud yell. Afterwards his body seemed to be getting itself under control once more, "But Liquid in his mind? That's too weird."

Ocelot had clearly been knocked further back into his own psyche, leaving Liquid as the still dominant personality once he opened his mouth to speak again. Picking up where he left off at taunting Snake, "The price of your physical prodigy. A few more years and you'll be another dead clone of our old man. Our raw materials are vintage brother. Big Boss wasn't exactly at his youngest when they created his copies." He then lifted the transplanted arm into the air, "But I live on through this arm!"

Ocelot got a surgery to transplant an arm in 2005 in Lyon. Did he seriously put Liquid's arm onto his body in place of the one Gray Fox cut off? And why the whole arm? He only lost his right hand back then, "That is messed up!" Naruto shouted at Liquid Ocelot, "Why can't you just die like a normal person? You had your shot and you screwed it up, you don't get second chances like this!"

As if his anger triggered it, another explosion rocked the ship, leaving Snake stumbling on the stage below. Liquid Ocelot grinned ferally and jumped up from his spot on the catwalk onto RAY's head to reach the cockpit just as the makeshift platform collapsed.

Naruto pulled out his SOCOM and fired at Liquid despite the violently rocking and swaying tanker that housed the conflict. His vision was clouded with red just as the mere thought that Liquid was still alive, "You don't cheat death! Master Miller doesn't get a second chance! Gray Fox doesn't get a second chance you son of a bitch! What makes you so goddamned special?" He yelled at him, a rugged tone entering his voice as his whisker-marks deepened. All he wanted was to jump onto RAY and tear Liquid or Ocelot or whoever it was apart.

"You can't shoot when you're using your 'angry powers' can you?" Liquid Ocelot taunted in amusement, getting the cockpit open and slipping inside effortlessly as the machine Metal Gear RAY roared to life.

Forgoing his gun as he threw it to the ground, deeming it useless, he freely pumped orange chakra to give him a boost as he jumped onto RAY's head and began pounding away at the opening to the cockpit. His fists thudded off of the ceramic titanium-alloy again and again as the eyes of the machine lit up and it began to move.

Snake had fallen from the stage into the water after the last explosion, but he pulled himself back up and out in time to see the angry young blonde man trying to rip his way through reinforced armor to rip into Liquid Ocelot next, "Kid get off now!"

RAY began swinging its head around violently to get Naruto off. Staying stuck to Gamabunta for the entirety of an afternoon was one thing, he hadn't had anything to slam himself into to shake him off. RAY did, and it smashed its head into and through the balcony and into the wall of the hold, sending Naruto roughly into the twisted metal balcony he had to grab a hold of to keep from falling into the rising water.

"You just don't have what it takes after all do you?" Liquid taunted again, apparently feeling victorious in his new death machine. And why on earth wouldn't he have felt victorious? He was safe inside of a waterproof Metal Gear, Naruto and Snake were for lack of a more detailed explanation not in one, "You're going down right along with this tanker!"

Naruto pulled himself up to a stable portion of the balcony as RAY stomped on the stage Snake stood on, breaking it down the middle and forcing him to cling to one edge of it to avoid slipping into the water. The Marines that were still in the room tried to open fire with their assault rifles on RAY, but they might as well have been throwing rocks for all it was worth. A careless swipe of a fin and RAY knocked the hapless bastards into oblivion, their bodies joining the other deceased in the water.

Snake managed the cling tightly enough to his stage to reach his feet and observe the scene as he reached for his Codec, "Otacon, we have a problem." He said as RAY stuck its head into the still rising water and seemed to inhale deeply. After doing so it lifted its head back up and opened its mouth, releasing a thin, powerful jet of water that fired like a laser. It was powerful enough to cut right through the hull and bring in even more water quicker than before.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A clone popped into existence and without a verbal order began skipping and hopping over the wreckage in the water to reach Snake's ruined stage, "Boss says we need to get out of here. Now."

"No shit." Snake said as the clone grabbed a hold of them and the two jumped back to where Naruto was leaning down over the balcony with an outstretched hand. The clone gave Snake a boost and threw him up to where he could grab a hold of the original and promptly dispersed, "We're stuck down here kid. The exits to the hold were sealed off, the only one open was the one we used."

Ths ship shook again as RAY showed off its aquatic capabilities and went under the water, waiting for the leak in the ship to stop billowing water so that it could make its getaway.

Great, now going after RAY would be suicide for certain. Naruto didn't even know a weak point on the thing and it was underwater to boot. They needed to get away, but his Rasengan couldn't bust down a reinforced steel door specifically designed to be able to stop thousands of pounds of water pressure, "We have to try to get out, can't we just try the way we came in? How did Sergei originally plan on getting his men out before this all went to hell?"

"It might be our only shot…" Snake grumbled, touching his hand to his ear to activate the Codec, "Otacon the ship's sinking!"

"_I know, I know! Tell me you're still not in the hold!"_ Otacon beseeched in return to his friend and ally.

"Okay, I won't." Snake said dryly as he and Naruto ran back over the balconies in the hold.

In the previous rooms there were men wading through the water beneath them trying to find some way out. The opposing Marine and Gurlukovich Mercenary forces that were still alive were steadily fighting in the water as they tried to escape, but the ladder to the balcony that housed the open door was destroyed by explosive damage, "Damn it! Otacon the only way out is-!" He started to say before Naruto grabbed him by his collar and stuck to the wall, crawling along it and the ceiling to get them across to the other side, "Nevermind."

They reached the other side and Naruto dropped Snake safely onto the balcony before falling down to it himself. The two opened the normal door and began running through the corridor to lead back to the upper levels of the ship. Naruto's hand was similarly at his ear as he tried to make a call as well, "Damn it Olga isn't picking up!" She probably lost her radio during her fight with Snake, and she was more than likely still out of it to boot, "I've got to go make sure she got out."

"This thing is going down!" Snake argued to Naruto, "We need to get the hell out of here or we're going with it!" He then turned his attention back to Otacon on the Codec, "Tell me you're close, give me some kind of good news here!"

"_I am, I'm circling the wreck right now. It looks like a total mess from up here. Is someone with you Snake?"_

"Yeah, the kid." Snake then went into more specific identification after not hearing anything over the line and getting a glare from Naruto, "You know who it is! It's Naruto. He was right there when Ocelot went nuts and tore the place apart. Either way when we get on deck get ready to lower the ladder and pick us up."

"_I'm on it, just make sure you get your ass out of there Snake, I don't really want to fish your corpse out of the bay, that'd be really hard to swallow."_

The two of them reached the end of the corridors and luckily the hatch to the small locker area beside the engine room wasn't sealed. Naruto spun it and quickly yanked that door wide open to continue giving them a chance to escape. The ship wasn't underwater yet or else the water would have been spilling in from above as well. Snake was about to run into the engine room itself before he grabbed Snake by his arm and dragged him to another hatch nearby.

"Kid this thing is sealed, I tried it from the other side!" Snake's urging that the other side had been sealed seemingly spurred Naruto on to open the door faster.

"I spent the last two years of my life on an aircraft carrier. Don't you fucking argue with me about ship stuff!" Naruto said as he easily spun the hatch loose and slammed the door open. Snake gave him a look of bewilderment as they continued to run along up the stairs to the actual crew level of the ship. Naruto answered the unasked question, "It may have been sealed from the other side, but that just means that one side has to be open."

The Gurlukovich Mercenaries had set the doors to make sure that the Marines stayed as trapped as possible in the lower levels of the ship. A real bastard move, but good for making threats like they did with the Semtex.

As they reached the top of the stairs and worked their way out into the crew's lounge, Naruto spotted the unresponsive Olga still laying on one of the couches, right where he left her, "Thank Kami…" Naruto said to himself as he stopped by her and tried to shake her awake, "Come on Olga, wake up, we seriously need to get the hell out of here now." After fifteen seconds of shaking and no response Naruto turned to Snake who was looking around ready to run out of there, "What the hell did you tranq her with? Whatever it was is even making me sluggish."

"Sluggish?" Snake said in disbelief as Naruto picked Olga up carefully from the couch, "Kid one of those to the thigh will put a grown man down within ten seconds. I hit her with three, I don't even know how many times I hit you." And he was complaining about being groggy? Just what was this brat supposed to be? It was getting worrisome at this point, "Whatever, let's just go already!"

They left the crew's lounge and ran through a hall with windows to the outside that showed just how high the water was in comparison to the ship as it was spilling over onto the deck at this point, "Fuck not that way, not that way!" Naruto said as both he and Snake averted their trajectory and went the other way to head back up to the bridge and observation deck, "Are you sure we have a way out here?" He had his platform board that he could call, but it couldn't carry the three of them. Two was pushing it for keeping adequate control.

"There's always a way, even if you have to make your own." Snake said as they darted up the stairs to the upper levels. The walls of the hallways seemed to blur together until they finally reached the bridge, the distorted off-kilter angle of the entire ship was a bad sign. Snake had been stumbling about the halls and Naruto had to channel chakra to his feet in order to keep perfectly upright lest he drop Olga.

Water began coursing into the ship from levels above them to the point where they could no longer walk properly and had to swim instead. The two were forced to swim their way the rest of the way out of the ship, with Naruto taking care not to drown the girl on his back. She was really under deep if being completely submerged in water couldn't wake her up.

As the two finally got out of the sinking ship they took large gasps of breath now that they were able to do so. Before they could take stock of the situation, RAY burst from the water on the other side of the ship remains and stood on the barely visible metal parts of the destroyed tanker before letting out a roar and jumping high into the air, landing in the water to swim off.

The massive metal construct hitting the water caused a wave that swept away the bodies that had floated up to the surface, both Marine and Gurlukovich Mercenary alike. And with those bodies went Naruto and Snake as they were easily pushed aside and sent under again.

Both popped up from the water once more, hoping that no more nasty surprises were in store for them tonight. And this was supposed to be something simple.

XxX

(With Ocelot)

Metal Gear RAY swam through the waters as if it had been born there, as if it were a living aquatic creature moving underneath the waves. And behind the controls sat Ocelot, seemingly back to normal and contacting his superiors on what had just transpired, "Yes, right at the location we discussed. I have photographic evidence of Snake and Uzumaki on the scene. The Cypher was most useful." He laughed to himself, "Yes I know you didn't particularly like the boy, but he's not your problem one way or the other anymore. I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning's newsflash."

He was idly paying attention to the marine wildlife keeping a far distance from RAY, as if they could sense it was meant to cause nothing but harm. His attention was mostly situated on the people speaking to him.

"I would say that the Marine Corps' plans are on indefinite hold." Ocelot said before pausing to wait for whoever he was talking to. A smirk slowly crawled across his face as he sat back in his chair, feeling victorious, "Yes of course. Mr… President."

XxX

"SNAKE!"

Eventually Naruto and Snake saw a smaller vessel in the water just sailing around the scene. The horn let out a honk and a small smile slipped onto Snake's face, "Good old Otacon… now all we have to do is swim-. What the hell?" He said as he found his arm hoisted over the back of the neck of a second Naruto that appeared out of nowhere.

The two Narutos, one with Olga the other with Snake, charged over the choppy waves, trying to keep their balance and reach Otacon's boat, "Swimming is for regular people!" Snake had a look on his face that said that he wanted pummel the clone into oblivion, but doing so would deposit him neatly into the water. Thus he waited until they had boarded Otacon's small boat before he delivered a hard smashing punch to clone-Naruto's head.

"Ow!" The original Naruto said, holding the back of his head where Snake had hit his clone. The power behind the punch almost made him fall onto the deck with Olga in hand, "You dick, is that what you do when someone tries to help you out?"

Snake grumbled and cracked the knuckle that had hit the clone, "You could have picked a less emasculating way to help if you ask me." He would have preferred swimming to that… at least his pride would have.

"Are you guys alright?" Otacon asked from his little station where the person steering the ship stood at the wheel, "What the hell went wrong in there?"

"I'll tell you, just get us out of here Otacon…" Snake said, sitting against the edge of the ship, finally able to take a rest, "Get us _way_ out of here." He pointed to another ship coming up in the distance, "I don't think we want to be caught here do we?"

"Where to?" The scientist asked so he could try to plot a course.

"As far away from New York Harbor as possible." Naruto said, sitting down in a similar manner to Snake, Olga still in his arms, "I have to find some way to contact her men that are still in New York though. I know there are still some out there, they had a helicopter." He then noticed that Otacon didn't address him, keeping his back turned away from him as if he hadn't heard him.

Snake could tell what this was and thought he had gotten this point through to Otacon by then. Apparently he still held something of a grudge, "Don't sweat it kid. He's still mad at you for two years ago. You know, with Wolf and all that."

"Oh." Naruto said with a frown before touching his hand to his ear to find the correct frequency on his Codec, "Well if I'm in the way then I'll just go. No problem. It was good seeing you again Snake, even if you do age like a fruit."

"Ha ha." Snake said sarcastically, "But wait, you don't have to go. After what we just got out of, don't you think we should try piecing together just what the hell went wrong in that tanker tonight? Why were you even there?"

Damn, Naruto had called for his platform board to show up, but he had at the very least a minute or two to wait before it made it from where he stashed it beforehand all the way out to the harbor, "I was there to stop Olga's dad Sergei from getting Metal Gear. I was going to try to destroy it or sabotage it or something. And then I was probably going to capture Ocelot too. He's got a lot to answer to me for… even more now."

"Why?" It was a question that Snake had to ask. Naruto had said explicitly that he wasn't necessarily out to stop the spread of Metal Gear derivatives the way Philanthropy was. He had seriously stuck his neck underneath the guillotine tonight, so what was the reason for it?

Naruto just gestured his head down to the sleeping scar-faced girl, "For her. She needed my help… and I thought I could give it to her. But I was useless… Ocelot still got Metal Gear, he still got her dad… damn it, I just can't get a decent win over that old bastard! And what was that thing with Liquid's arm?"

Hearing that got Otacon's attention, "Liquid's arm?"

Snake took it upon himself to explain, "When Ocelot saw us he seemed to go nuts. He totally went off the deep end and apparently Liquid's spirit possessed his body through the arm that he got to replace the hand that Gray Fox cut off in Alaska."

Otacon seemed to be rather interested in that development. An arm causing a possession of someone's body, "Like a ghost or something?"

"Ghosts aren't real." Snake said with a scoff.

"Like hell they're not." Naruto chimed in, interrupting the conversation, "Ghosts are totally real… but you weren't talking to me, so I'll just stop now." He finished sheepishly once he felt the scrutinizing eyes of both Snake and Otacon on him. Luckily his platform board had a good sense of timing since the whirring of the machinery sounded out over the rain that still fell in the storm. It came to a stop just over the side of the boat, prompting Naruto to stand up and hop aboard as he kept a good grasp on Olga, "I've got to go get her back to her people before they think she's dead too… it was a massacre in there."

Snake nodded solemnly. Just how many Marines and mercenaries died inside of that tanker? He didn't want to even find out the number.

Naruto looked over the two members of Philanthropy before speaking again, "I think I'll change my Codec frequency after this just to be safe. I'll make it 140.76. Don't be strangers, alright. I'd really not like to keep meeting up with you guys only for things like this." And with that he flew off on his board.

Snake watched Naruto's board head back towards the city to drop Olga off somewhere, "He's probably going to take her to Brighton Beach…" Snake muttered to himself. If he were a Russian mercenary that's probably where he'd set up shop so if Olga's group had a base of operations for this mission that was probably where it was.

"He could do something like this for that girl that tried to kill you, whose father tried to take a weapon like Metal Gear RAY…" Otacon said to himself, though Snake could hear him speak, "But he could kill Wolf in cold-blood the way he did at Shadow Moses." He shook his head as he continued to drive the boat, "I don't know if I can explain it Snake, I just can't. But I can't bring myself to like or trust him."

"He's a good kid." Snake said, but he didn't say anything else on the matter. Otacon's thing with Naruto was personal. He wasn't like him. He didn't understand Naruto and he didn't seem to be able to try. He wasn't going to force the issue if there was no need to. Empathy was a luxury a lot of people like Snake and Naruto wouldn't get from more normal folks like Otacon, even if the man seemed to try to understand Snake at least.

The two sailed in silence before the ship that had been trailing in the distance exploded in a fiery blast, scaring the daylights out of Otacon and putting Snake on alert. The flames on top of the water burned, lighting the stormy night up as the raindrops tried to quell the blaze in vain.

"What the hell just happened Otacon?" Snake said lowly as he stared at the scene.

Otacon just shook his head and adjusted his glasses on his face as he went back to steering the ship, "We'll find out later. I for one don't want to drive this thing over to _that_." There was still a niggling thought in his head, because that was the exact same spot where the tanker had gone down.

XxX

(The Next Day – Somewhere in Ontario, Canada)

Naruto had dropped Olga off at a hospital close to where he knew someone would be able to find her and more or less improvised a beacon that sent the rest of Gurlukovich Mercenaries in the area right to him. He had to dodge a few bullets since he was perceived as a bad guy from their perspective, but it was a good deed for a friend that needed him. He could take some gunfire for her if he had to. It was just too bad that she had lost her radio. He would have wanted to at least check in on her to make sure she was alright. She wouldn't get a very welcome surprise once she woke up and found that her father had died during the mission.

From that point on he flew his board into Canada, keeping low enough to stay off radar. He had a lot of ground to cover to get to his safe spot for any op performed in America.

At sunrise he had taken the time to stop in a forest and catch a few hours of sleep before moving out again. He wasn't on a deadline, but his gut told him to put as much distance between himself and the sunken tanker at New York Harbor as he could. If he hadn't had such a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach he would have stuck around New York until Olga woke up.

And that horrible feeling manifested itself in the form of annoying beeping inside of his head, prompting him to wake from his slumber in the woods to answer his Codec, "Hello? What's up Colonel?" He asked Colonel Jackson in a sleepy voice. Despite resetting his Codec's frequency for safety reasons he made sure that Jackson had a short list of possible frequencies he'd use that he made him memorize.

"_What on God's green Earth did you do Rapture?"_ Jackson said in a low, grave tone of voice. He certainly didn't seem happy to be having this conversation.

"What do you mean what did I do?" Naruto said, sitting straight up as he was now wide awake, "I didn't do anything, I didn't kill anyone. That tanker thing wasn't my fault it turned into a major clusterfuck." Jackson was still his handler for The Patriots. Depending on how much he knew, telling him of Ocelot either wouldn't matter or would just put the man out there.

"_Why were you attacking an oil tanker in the first place?"_ The commanding officer snapped at his blonde subordinate, _"We don't hit civilian targets! You know that! You knew that better than any of them! You were the one that wasn't borderline rogue, you were the good one!"_

"There was a lot of stuff on that tanker Colonel, but oil wasn't one of them." Naruto said, trying to defend himself, "There wasn't a single civvie on that ship, I swear. All Marines. It went to hell, but I didn't do that."

"_It's all over the news kid, what do you expect anyone to think or say? They've got your picture. You and Solid Snake chatting together like old friends, and then a tanker full of oil goes up in the harbor. I've been getting calls nonstop since 2 a.m."_

They had his picture? His and Snake's? And when did oil come into the equation? There wasn't a single drop anywhere that he saw, so he needed to know what the deal was, "Tell me what you think happened. Please. Give me a chance. I always did right by you didn't I?"

"…_Fine."_ Jackson said before heaving a deep sigh, _"It's on every channel and every station in the country. TV and radio. Basically it's said that you and Solid Snake were apart of an eco-terrorist cell, Philanthropy. You two led an armed assault on the tanker and took it over, but when the Navy dispatched the Marines to deal with your threat you blew the ship in the harbor and killed everyone, even yourselves."_

"If you thought I actually did it then why are you calling me?" Naruto asked him.

"_Because you're a lot of things, but cowardly enough to blow a ship while you yourself are still on it? That's something you wouldn't ever touch. Especially if you had any kind of comrade on that ship with you. I've been ordering your manic, blonde ass around for two years, I think I can spot certain traits of your personality."_

Naruto chuckled despite himself before a silence fell between them, "Colonel I didn't do that. I'm not a terrorist. I fight head-on so to speak, even if you never see me do it. I didn't go outside of the parameters of the mission. I didn't kill anyone."

"_It doesn't matter since you're legally dead kid. But I'll try and clear your name posthumously. Just… don't do anything stupid. You're in the clear for once. You beat 'em Rapture. You're free. Now disappear the way you wanted to."_

He didn't win. Ocelot worked for The Patriots. The Patriots who apparently controlled everything worth talking about in the United States. Ocelot took RAY and sunk the tanker to cover his tracks. Where the hell did another tanker come from, and one with oil to boot? They just pulled one over on him. So yes he was free, they weren't going to be bothering him again chances were, but then again he wasn't free at all.

He was a criminal, accused of creating an oil spill and taking countless lives. They pronounced him dead. He wasn't going to be able to see his sister again. How would he reach her? Perhaps he could risk sneaking back into the country, but he had no doubts that eyes were on her to make sure he couldn't get to her without setting off every yahoo with a gun on the whole west coast.

"I… I won't be contacting you again Colonel." Naruto said solemnly, "And thanks. I know you were my 'handler' for The Patriots, but you were a good man."

"_Go somewhere quiet and far away and get yourself a girlfriend or something Rapture."_

The connection cut out with that parting comment from Colonel Jackson, leaving Naruto alone with himself in the wilderness. He just sat there contemplating for the longest time, not even bothering to fire up his board to travel. He didn't even care about how hungry he was at the moment. He simply stood up and punched a nearby tree hard enough to smash a crack the size and shape of his fist into it.

Then and only then did he activate his platform board and take off, continuing to ride through the woods as he headed west.

While flying low, his Codec went off again. He bit back the angry growl in his voice and answered it, "Yeah?"

"_Save the attitude kid, you're not the only one who's pissed right now."_

"Snake." Naruto said in a listless tone, "Hey, guess what? We're dead terrorists."

"_I heard. Hooray."_ Otacon planted a special body for his excuse after the second tanker blew. They had broken into a facility a year ago and had stolen Liquid's actual body, sans arm, for a scenario like this. How Naruto got away with being pronounced dead, Snake didn't know. Maybe it was because nobody would ask around about someone like him that had no one in America… at least as far as he knew.

"So what do you want?" Naruto asked rather impatiently, "I'm about to take myself into hiding so whatever it is, it better be on the way to where I'm going or it's not getting done."

"_Can you meet with me?"_

"Are you being traced or is anyone listening in on our conversation?"

"_No. Otacon solved that little issue. The frequency between he and I wound up compromised. How about you?"_

"No. So yes we can meet, but not in the lower 48." He was not going to step a pinky toe back into the main portion of the United States without one hell of a reason.

"_Good, because we don't feel like sticking around down here either. Canada?"_

"Hell no, it's not a good idea to hang around here anywhere in this country either. Go to Alaska. It's easier to hide there and easier to go somewhere else entirely if we have to. I have the perfect place too."

"_Where?"_

"You'll see, just get up there and call me when you do. I'll tell you where to go." There was definitely one place he could go to hide for a bit to try and get everything worked out for the time being. And no one alive knew that neck of the woods better than him.

* * *

><p><strong>I've not got much to say. I'm in pain and I'm bored… and it's Friday… so that's what I've got going on for me right now. How unfortunate. Anyway, I'll catch you all around for the next time. Hope you have and will continue to enjoy the story.<strong>

**So now what will happen? I don't know. Ask someone that has a clue. I have an excuse for a slipshod mindstate, I'm concussed, remember people that read my other stories?**

**Kenchi out.**


	20. Live Long Enough to be the Villain

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I do own a revolver… but sadly I cannot ricochet bullets ala Revolver Ocelot… and now my basement has a lot of bullet holes. I don't think our insurance covers gunshot damage.

**Chapter 20: Live Long Enough to be the Villain**

* * *

><p>(Mid-August 2007 – Interior Alaskan Wilderness – Naruto: Age 20)<p>

"Damn it Olga…" Naruto thought, drumming his fingertips on the trunk of a tree as he sat in a very sturdy branch, his other hand to his ear to show that his Codec was active, "For the love of Kami woman call me already. I know you woke up by now."

Being in Alaska in the summer was so much easier to exist in than in the winter. It was just absurd. Naruto had been living off the land and avoiding any and all towns and public areas since the conversation with Colonel Jackson that told him he had been considered dead.

The entire situation had left a bad taste in his mouth, but with Naruto being the eternal optimist in ever increasingly bleak situations, he figured that things could have been far worse. He could have been killed. Olga or Snake… hell, even Otacon could have been killed. He still had all of his weapons, his ammunition, and his platform board which he had stashed near his current hideout. And the eyes were off of him for the first time in two years. That sinking paranoia that had been brewing in his gut since after the Lyon Incident was gone.

And it was because they figured that he had run the course for his usefulness now. He and Snake had taken the fall for what Ocelot had done on the tanker. Well at least if he and Snake were going to be perceived as terrorists the Patriots had the good grace to have him declared dead. It was times like this where he sincerely wished that he still had Henge no Jutsu (Transformation Jutsu) to use… then and during every single infiltration mission he had ever been given of course.

But crying over his current circumstances was not going to solve a single problem.

Right now, he had given coordinates to Snake to find his location and he was waiting for the veteran soldier and trying to kill time by reaching Olga. He had been failing miserably in that last regard, "They probably changed their main frequencies before setting out on this mission just in case things went wrong." He mused, mostly because that was what he did with his own.

Aside from that, they were a travelling group of mercenaries. There was a chance that they weren't even stationed in the same base anymore. And Olga's own personal radio was gone due to the sinking of the U.S.S. Discovery and the subsequent cover-up explosion that spilled oil in the harbor. A new base wouldn't have the same communication channels, and therein lied his problem.

And if that weren't bad enough he realized why he wasn't getting any calls from her. In his panic after his conversation with Snake over their meeting place he got struck with a flash of his steadily developed paranoia and absentmindedly changed his frequency to one of his standbys.

That was just great. So he couldn't call her and talk to her to see how she was and not a single person on his team knew his new frequency, 'You're such a dumbass Naruto...'

Her old man had just died… and while Master Miller hadn't been his actual father in any way, shape, or form he still could relate as to what that was like. Maybe with his newfound freedom he could slide over to Russia to see her and his team after he was finished meeting with Snake?

Either way it was then time to get back to business, because his crack team of recon clones caught sight of a car letting two men out to walk the several miles to the house on the single unkempt dirt road that led there. This was why he had been waiting in the forest for them to arrive. It was taking longer than he thought though. Even with the clearly unathletic Otacon walking both he and Snake should have gotten there an hour ago.

He tried to ask his clones the question through their mental connection, but they weren't giving him any response. The connection was still up because he could feel that they were still in existence and that brought back his paranoia ten-fold, so he simply sat at the ready in his current position to wait.

XxX

"Are you sure we should have gone ahead Snake?" Otacon said as the scientist and Snake's closest confidant walked behind the man in the forest carrying a rather large suitcase. He wore a brown trench coat, black gloves, and grey slacks as he had been currently sweating due to the unnecessary layer over the rest of his clothes, "And how much further do you think it is?"

"You shouldn't have worn the stupid trench coat Otacon." Snake commented with some amusement, a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth as they walked. Snake wore a dark blue button up shirt that was open and had a white t-shirt underneath, a pair of blue jeans and brown boots as well. His headband was not on his forehead, but it was close by as it always was.

"Well excuse me for trying to be prepared for coming to Alaska."

"It's July." Snake deadpanned, turning to show Otacon the expression on his face, "So unless we're staying here until the end of summer when you'll actually need that, I don't think you needed to be _that_ prepared. And what are you talking about, 'Should we have gone ahead?'"

Hearing the tone of his friend, Otacon adjusted his glasses in an attempt to save some face, "Well you know what I mean. It's not like I'm _that_ kind of person, but-."

Before Otacon could get off on a tangent to defend his earlier comment questioning if they should have gone ahead, Snake cut him off to save the time that would have been wasted on his doing so, "Well then you can go back then if you think that I was wrong and that you can actually protect her." He turned towards the man to find him shaking his head rapidly, "Then calm down. I'm supposed to be dead, remember? And aside from that, no one even knows how or where to find us."

Despite the publicity the book on Shadow Moses got, no one knew what any of the players in the incident really looked like, so no one particularly knew what Snake's appearance was. He still had to be careful, which took out commercial flight as a method of travel, but other than that he'd be fine.

"Still… maybe I'm just more chivalrous than you?" A grin came to Otacon's face as he said that in an effort to get a rise out of Snake.

A scoff came from Snake as he saw what Otacon was trying to do. Humor wasn't particularly Snake's thing, "Sorry… but with my track record of more women shooting at me than trying to get me to buy them dinner you can see why my chivalry is sorely lacking." He rubbed his nose as a large house came into sight, "I don't think that girl is going to need any help either considering who her family is."

Despite not expecting any trouble in this location, Snake still had a gun concealed under his shirt and his hand strayed towards it as they walked up the open driveway and the front porch to the door.

Otacon looked around, hearing and seeing nothing that would have indicated anyone else's presence there, "Are we sure he's here? I mean, these are the coordinates he gave us, but Naruto never really struck me as a logistically competent person."

"That's not a nice thing to say about me."

Hearing the young voice of the blonde man in question standing right behind him, Otacon screamed in panic, jumped almost out of his shoes, and ran behind (or in front of) Snake before he could reach the front door.

With Naruto revealing himself to the pair, Snake turned around with a sigh to come face-to-face with the grinning blonde, "You've got to make your own fun somehow, huh kid? What with us being dead terrorists and all."

That put a frown back on Naruto's face as he walked forward to the front door to open it himself, "Dead terrorists huh? That sounds like a really good band." Naruto picked the lock to the door quickly and opened it wide for all of them to walk into, "Welcome to Master Miller's old house. I haven't been here in almost four years."

"We're safe here?" Otacon asked curiously, "Wouldn't there be someone trying to sell or buy this house by now? He died two years ago."

"Someone still owns the house." Naruto answered as he walked inside and looked around the darkened foyer, "I don't think she sold it or was ever planning on selling it. I'll be out of here before it matters anyway. She won't know I was ever even here."

"I really wouldn't count on that kid." Snake seemed to be amused about something, but there wasn't anything entertaining about being in his old home. It was like a museum, like nothing at all had changed since he had left to originally join FOXHOUND, "So what's it like being home?"

"It sucks." Naruto admitted as he started walking through the house, "No Master Miller, no Kitty… this isn't home anymore." It was just somewhere to take refuge for the time being until he was able to figure out what to do next. He was officially free of the U.S. Armed Forces now, and the Patriots had cut him loose even though it was done in the most ass way possible. He then felt a hand on his shoulder, one that he shrugged off as he didn't want anyone's pity. After a moment, the same hand set itself on his shoulder again, more firmly this time, "What is it?" He asked heatedly.

He was then forcefully turned around to come face to face with a pair of green eyes looking up at him… and they looked rather angry.

SLAP!

Yes. They were very angry green eyes, and they belonged to a young blonde woman that he knew very, very well since she was his sister in all but blood by this point. She still had her blonde hair in one long braid going down her back with two bangs framing her face and wore a dark red long-sleeved shirt and jeans. The necklace he had given her was still right around her neck, "What the hell did you get yourself into over this blackmail crap?" Catherine demanded an answer without missing a beat.

Naruto on the other hand didn't know what he was more stunned and surprised about; the fact that she had just slapped the taste out of his mouth, or the fact that she was even there in the first place. Wasn't he pronounced dead? How odd, "Kitty what are you doing here?"

"I knew you weren't dead dumbass!" Snapped Catherine as she got right in the taller blonde's face, "You wouldn't do anything like what they said you did on the news… blowing up an entire ship of Marines and yourself. That's a move for cowards, and you're a lot of things Aniki but you're not a coward." She then turned away from him with her arms crossed, "So I decided to move here and wait for you to come back… I knew you would eventually, I just didn't think you'd beat me here."

Otacon decided to chime in at that moment, "Believe it or not she got into contact with us." He saw the surprise on Naruto's face and laughed sheepishly, "Yeah, I couldn't tell you how she managed to do it either." At that point all eyes turned toward Catherine for long enough that she began to feel uneasy, "Well, are you going to explain or what?"

"I don't really want to…" Catherine said with a sheepish expression.

"Kitty…"

"Fine." She relented with a huff, "Ever since you left L.A. with that Colonel to work off your blackmail I started checking some stuff out. Some things branched into other things since I was using the internet and the book about Shadow Moses as a guide. I looked into the author, Nastasha Romanenko, and found that she had donated a lot of her money from book sales to a non-government organization Philanthropy… and then the dominoes started falling."

A growl came from Snake as he leaned against the doorway, a new cigarette in hand, "It was that easy for a baby like you to find us?" Master Miller's daughter or not, she had absolutely no training to his knowledge and when she got a hold of them while they were travelling through Canada it wasn't exactly something Snake enjoyed having happen.

"I'm 18 you jerk." Catherine said flippantly before pointing between both Snake and Otacon, "And it wasn't easy at all. After I got that far it took two years to pull up enough information to narrow down your frequency. You need to scramble it more. But maybe if you weren't such a luddite like my brother you'd understand how to cover your tracks better in cyberspace. It's as good a weapon as anything else these days."

Otacon nodded in agreement with Catherine's statement, "It's true. I've been telling you Snake, just because there's no record you can see doesn't mean there isn't any record of something at all. If you weren't such a technophobe aside from when it comes to guns we'd have better luck." Snake just muttered to himself by the door about stupid kids.

"I am not a luddite!" Naruto argued, taking offense to her labeling of him, "I just don't like all that computer stuff that much. It doesn't mean I don't know anything about them or that I hate them. I cover my tracks just fine thank you very much Little Miss Cyber-Rat." Catherine stuck her tongue out at Naruto and he in turn flipped her off before they literally began butting heads, "I don't see you for two years and I've got to deal with this shit right off the bat? Can't I get a hug or something? Damn."

Well he had a point that Catherine couldn't deny, so with softened features, she simply wrapped her arms around the larger blonde soldier and let him do the same to her, "…You jackass. I should be so mad at you. I told you I didn't want you getting caught in something terrible just so you could 'keep me safe' or whatever your prideful crap is all about. And now look…"

"Sorry." Naruto said honestly, "I did my best… I thought they had already screwed me over as badly as they would have done as long as I played ball."

Even with his best efforts to keep from ruining her life it wound up still happening anyway if the connection between the two of them could be made. Though that would be difficult since he didn't exist as her legal family and there was no paper trail or cyber trail of his existence other than the crap that the army had on him, and all they had on him aside from the stuff from physicals which were super-classified due to his genes and his graduation picture. But it was a far from impossible conclusion to come to, especially since a few of Catherine's friends had met him in the past. If they cared to remember who he was from one momentary meeting that is.

There were a bunch of similarities that Otacon could see between the two blonde pseudo-siblings and his own former relationship with his own sister Emma. It actually kind of hurt to see. They weren't real siblings just like he and his stepsister but they were brought together and got close regardless, Naruto went off and left the way Otacon himself had left his family back in the day only Naruto's reasons weren't the same and he was able to keep the vast majority of his honor when he did so. And Naruto hadn't ever let his sister down the way he had, because if he were really blackmailed with her as the threat the way Naruto's sister had claimed he had been for so long he wasn't sure that he would have been able to stick it out.

"Well the kid's alive girl. That's all that matters." Snake said, for as touching as the reunion was he really just wanted to get down to business; he was simply not going to let what happened in New York Harbor stand. Ocelot had a dangerous new Metal Gear for the Patriots. Who were these people? Liquid never said much of anything about them before he died, only that they were the ones he truly wanted to bring down, "Now what do we do?"

The lot of them walked into the living room and sat down, with Naruto recreating his clones to head back outside to keep watch over the area while they deliberated. Snake sat in a wooden chair closest to the exit of the room while Otacon took a spot in an easy chair. Catherine plopped down next to Naruto on a sofa and looked around feeling appropriately like the odd person out, "So… since I'm here and I'm not going anywhere can you guys tell me just what the hell went down last week or what?"

XxX

(50 km Outside of Vladivostok, Russia – Gurlukovich Mercenary Base)

A newer base, further south than the one that had been inhabited before the episode at Shadow Moses, housed the bulk of the standing mercenary force belonging formerly to the former commanding officer in Spetznaz GRU Sergei Gurlukovich.

Now that distinction belonged to his daughter Olga… even though she was none too happy with that turn of events.

Johnny backed up a few steps as Olga punched a stone pillar hard enough to chip a good amount of it off, "Miss Olga is really pissed…" He commented idly to both Meryl and Sniper Wolf who were nearby with dozens of others in the room.

"Duh…" Meryl said, rapping Johnny over the back of his balaclava-clad head for making a dumb observation, "She just woke up and found out her dad and her friend were dead. I would certainly be upset if I were her."

Wolf shook her head as she could hear the soldiers closest to Olga trying to speak to her to calm her down in Russian, "What happened out there?" By that point it had become worldwide news that Solid Snake and Naruto Uzumaki of Shadow Moses fame had blown up a tanker in the harbor, a trap for Marines boarding the ship to take control of a terrorist hostage situation. The worst environmental disaster in history, "The news is bullshit. There's no way he's dead." Someone had serious control over the media to pull that lie off.

"Of course it is." Meryl said resolutely. Neither Naruto or Snake were like that, and as co-conspirators that both died on the ship? Yeah right. The two working together at Shadow Moses was nothing more than circumstantial. If Naruto had made one decision differently they would have wound up being enemies all the same, "I don't like this one bit…"

Blinking, though his facial expression was unseen behind his ever-present facemask, Johnny had a concern of his own as he heard the jangling of spurs and saw who had just entered the room, "Uh-oh. Heads up." That got everyone's attention as Ocelot walked right into the room.

The crowd cleared out and allowed him to walk right up to Olga who glared at him hatefully, unfallen tears misting her eyes, "What do you want Shalashaska? Are you happy now? You've been in my father's ear since I was a little girl and you finally got him killed. I supposed you're going to try and take control of the unit next aren't you?" Her tone for that last part was half-mocking, but just in case that was what he was after, her hand was subtly straying towards her gun at her waist.

Ocelot just continued to walk closer to Olga before standing in front of her, well within reaching distance for her to slug him if she were so inclined to do so. From the tensing of her fists as he stood right in front of her it was clear that she was certainly thinking of it.

Ignoring this, Ocelot simply chose to address her directly, "Your father and all of those men on that ship gave their lives to get Metal Gear RAY out and that responsibility fell to me as I was the only one who could pilot it to somewhere safe. You are aware of what _really_ happened aren't you?"

A stiff nod came from Olga before she began to recant what she was told by those that had stayed with her upon awakening. Meryl, Johnny, and Wolf listened closely as they weren't privy to the actual details of what went wrong, "The explosions we planted as leverage over the Marines in the hold were triggered and the ship sank."

"And how do you think they were detonated?"

"Either my father or you." Olga replied, her glare just as intense as ever. If looks could kill then Ocelot would have had a pair of eye-shaped holes boring through him somewhere. It would probably intimidate someone lesser than him, "He was the only one with an actual remote detonator. Anyone else would have had to trip the laser-traps or would have had to be at the explosives themselves to detonate them. They would never have survived."

"You simply don't understand what occurred." Ocelot said, tapping his temple as if he were urging Olga to think, "We had cleared the deck of any guards, and only Snake and the Naruto brat were on that ship with us. I saw both of them down in the hold trying to fight for RAY. Little blonde bastard is still more trouble than ever… though he's not little anymore."

The new leader of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries bit the inside of her lip before speaking again, "What happened? Tell me." Naruto promised her he wouldn't kill anyone. So why did this have to happen? Was Ocelot saying that Naruto was the reason everything went to hell?

'Poor distraught thing.' Ocelot thought to himself with a feeling of victory. Whether she knew it or not, Olga was hanging off of his every word to find out why her father and all of those men that had gone on the mission were no longer with them, "The boy picked his spots well. Too bad he wasn't very attentive. The second your father held up the detonator as a threat to the Marines down below in the hold he figured it was a weapon and launched one of those damnable throwing knives of his. It hit the detonator hand and Sergei dropped it, causing the explosion that began to sink the ship."

Ah, it was such an advantage to be the only living person in the room that had actually been there to bear witness to what had actually occurred. And as he looked around and saw the faces of anger from most of the mercenaries that remembered Naruto not-so-fondly from their past run-in in Iraq and how he helped end their ambitions at Shadow Moses. He at least had them believing his every word.

Not everyone in the room saw it his way though despite this marked advantage.

"He's full of shit." Wolf said softly, under the rumblings of the Russian soldiers that were beginning to chatter. The female sniper had her eyes narrowed on Ocelot as if she had a gun trained on him at that very moment, "Little Probie… if there was one thing that I explicitly drilled into his head, it was to know without a doubt what you were aiming at before you chose to attack." It didn't matter if it were a gun or those knives he seemed so partial to, he knew better than that.

As much as Meryl or Johnny wanted to jump up and dispute this point with Ocelot, what good would it have done in a room full of people that wanted to kill Naruto anyway? The only one that it really mattered whether or not they believed was Olga.

Although that didn't stop Wolf from speaking up, "Now come on Ocelot. You know full well that even if you didn't give him the time of day to teach him better, I certainly did. He wouldn't have beaten me if he were that lacking in his attention to detail."

"I'm telling you what I saw." Ocelot said, choosing to look over at his former FOXHOUND comrade even though he showed no anxiety or anger to her skepticism. Even though he knew nothing of their continuing relationship after Shadow Moses he was aware of the fact that those two were the closest out of the former team, "I identified him and shot at him while he had one of those things ready to throw. I missed, and his focus slipped. You know the rest. He's hot-headed."

And she couldn't say that he wasn't because all of them knew that he was. So even if it was an accident it was still fully in the realm of possibility.

With all that had been happening recently, Olga's mind was spinning. Had her own desire to protect her father from the man she felt was a snake among them gotten him killed in the end by the person she had enlisted for help? And she hadn't heard from him at all since she passed out on board the U.S.S. Discovery, nor could anyone reach him. He wasn't returning her or anyone else's attempts to call him so was he avoiding her? Had he really done it?

"Leave…" Olga said to Ocelot, leaving no room for discussion as she held one hand on her head and took a seat, "_Now_." She simply didn't want to see the man anymore as she was still overtly angry at him.

Ocelot didn't argue, nor did he try to press his luck with the clearly emotional woman. He did just as requested and left the room. And with him, the multitude of mercenaries in the room left as well, as they didn't want to see the new leader that they had adored for years as Sergei's daughter and the best fighter among them the way she currently was, seemingly moments away from possibly crying.

The only three that didn't leave were Meryl, Sniper Wolf, and Johnny. Johnny didn't leave because Meryl had a hold of the back of his collar and kept him from trying to slip out with the others. With the room cleared except for the three of them and Olga, Meryl walked over to her and kneeled down in front of her, "You don't think Naruto or Snake really did that do you?"

"Solid Snake… maybe." Olga said, keeping her head low and her face out of sight, "He had no connection to me whatsoever. But Uzumaki, I just don't know. Why hasn't he been picking up? He said…" She then stopped herself before she said something personal from their last conversation that she didn't need getting out.

Wolf moved to Olga's side and held her in a hug to get her to calm down, "Just be easy." She said, "I know how you feel right now, but remember your baby. All of this stress and tension are not going to be good for it."

"I can't believe any of this." Johnny said as he began pacing around back and forth, "Boss is the most stand-up guy ever. There's no way he'd kill your father Miss Olga. No way. He'd know what that would have done to you."

'What if he felt as if his own life were at risk?' Olga thought to herself, 'Would he have done it if that were the case?' Her father had apparently been holding a detonator according to Ocelot and she had seen Naruto take lives firsthand. For as pleasant as he was to people he liked he had a heavy dark side which was clear by way of all of the lives he had taken in the past and in the openly expressed many ways he wished to murder Revolver Ocelot.

And then there was the possibility that he actually could have been working with Snake on that ship. What were the chances that both of them were there? She never saw what happened between them after she lost consciousness.

When she felt a pain in her head it was evident that she was thinking too hard about the situation. It was best to just take Wolf's advice for now and try to be easy for the time being. Things could be taken one step at a time, and right now she had to get her entire house in order now that she was running everything. Ocelot had gotten what he had wanted, Metal Gear RAY, so maybe he would leave them alone even though she'd be keeping a sharp eye on him as best she could.

"I guess until Naruto shows up again we're sticking with you." Meryl said, crossing her arms over her chest, "Because he's definitely not dead. Don't worry. He can give his side of the story once we talk to him again."

It was good that she had such confidence in him… at least Olga figured as much. She wished that she had the same assurance in his actions. But it was kind of hard to do so when no one could reach him to talk to him, 'I'm definitely going to punch him right in the face when I see him again… one way or the other.' His reasons for not contacting her couldn't be good, so he was either dead or he was avoiding her altogether, 'Uzumaki what did you do?'

XxX

(With Naruto, Snake, Otacon, and Catherine – Interior Alaskan Wilderness – Miller Household)

"Wow." Catherine looked at the three men in the room owlishly after hearing them enlighten her to the events that had really taken place on the tanker. She only thought things like that happened in movies. Hey, that'd be a good way to make money decades after all of this was over… making a movie about it… or several, "Does this happen a lot?" She asked her older brother sitting next to her.

"Not really…" Naruto said with a shrug, "Not like this anyway. This is new."

Snake rolled his eyes before remarking sarcastically, "No… because I always get accused of being a radical eco-terrorist after my operations. This is common for me." Catherine pulled her eyelid down at Snake and Naruto proceeded to flip him off, "Stupid kids… no respect."

"They were good." Otacon said, hand on his chin as he thought through the events and what had occurred in the aftermath, "Were we really making that much noise with them by stopping all of those Metal Gears from being created? What a frame-up."

Snake and Otacon had told the pair that they had been working to stop, destroy, and uncover information on the development of Metal Gear derivatives. They were actually beginning to be recognized by the U.N. Now that credibility, what little they had, was thoroughly shot. Ties were obviously broken.

With a tilt of her head, Catherine ventured another question, "So why frame Aniki too? Wasn't he working for them?"

Naruto raised his hand lamely to explain, "Uh… I think I know why. I kind of went off the reservation for a Dead Cell mission and took one out in Japan. That probably pissed them off now that I know what I do now. I didn't know they actually _wanted_ other countries to make Metal Gears." That's what you get for keeping grunts in the dark, "That's the kind of shit you tell someone that fought one and blew it up."

Adjusting his glasses back on his face, Otacon nodded, "Yes. You see we had heard that the Patriots were behind a new navy version of Metal Gear that we heard had failed… the one on the tanker wasn't it, that was just another Metal Gear mission I decided we could take to try and dig up more information on the Patriots. They didn't want us looking around for anymore Metal Gears that we could dig up info on in case we stumbled across the one they're building. You just stepped out of line and were too dangerous to keep around."

"What did they have you doing anyway?" Snake asked Naruto, wondering just what his assignments for the Patriots entailed.

The blue eyes of Naruto drifted towards Catherine momentarily before he saw her looking right at him, wondering just what he had been doing for two years, "You mean aside from killing people that they sent me after that were trouble for their secrets? I've been stealing nanomachine tech improvements, blueprints for new weapons, spying on technology developing companies and reporting findings. I don't know why they needed me for any of that."

A sigh came from the green-eyed blonde girl as she heard that he had been killing people. Catherine knew what Naruto's entire base job description was, and that he had been doing it partially for her, but it was hard to envision him as a killer simply because she had never seen it.

"They never tried to send you after us?" Snake asked with a raised eyebrow. If Naruto had been sent to kill people getting too close to finding out things about the Patriots then wouldn't he have been sent to find and kill them first? They were the closest… weren't they?

"They didn't know where you were. That's probably why." Naruto replied as if he hadn't just implied that he would have more than likely been sent to kill them if their location had been available to the Patriots, "You guys are really good at covering your tracks."

"It kind of helps when you don't have any family connections." Otacon remarked a little bitterly before shaking it off. It wasn't Naruto's fault that he and his own stepsister were estranged. It was just that seeing someone like Catherine with Naruto hurt him a little bit. That amount of trust she seemed to have in Naruto reminded him of Emma, "But enough about that. Do you have any plans right now?"

That was a good question. He couldn't stay in Master Miller's house. He was only there right then because it was a good place to hide for the time being. Once he had an actual plan of action he would have to vacate the premises carefully or else that hiding place could be compromised in case he ever needed it again later. He damn sure wasn't going back to the lower 48 states of the U.S. and he wasn't sticking around in Canada.

Russia? No that was obvious. It was the easiest place to get to given his circumstances. He was finally free and had the Patriots' eyes off of him, and he wasn't about to mess that up by being impatient. As much as he wanted to go look for his friends, Olga was tough and didn't need him to console her. She'd probably hit him if he even tried to anyway. And she had Meryl, Wolf, and even Johnny.

He'd go to them eventually, but now wasn't the time.

"I don't know." Naruto eventually admitted, "I had been trying to find my own stuff out about the Patriots, but I kept getting nothing. But I'll tell you one thing though." He stood up out of his chair and began pacing around the room with a scowl on his face, "I wanted to get away from them, but the way they did it I might as well be dead. I can't even spend much time with the person that I even worked for the Patriots for because I'm a terrorist that's supposed to be dead. So I'm their scapegoat… and that really pisses me off."

A smirk came over Snake's face as he watched the younger man walk about in the second foulest mood he'd seen him in before, "That's politics kid." He almost laughed when he heard Naruto snort like a bull, "What exactly are you going to do about it?"

"Find them and kick the shit out of them… the original plan I had when I first got into this mess two years ago." Naruto spared a glance towards Catherine before speaking again, "Kitty do you have access to everything Master Miller left you?"

"Yeah. The second I turned eighteen I got every scrap of inheritance I had to my name and moved it out of the country." Catherine said, crossing her arms spitefully at the lengths she had to go to in order to ensure that the things her father had posthumously left to her remained with her.

A skeptical look crossed Snake and Otacon's features as they heard her talk about her inheritance from Miller, "Come on now." Snake said, "Master Miller was a grunt like me and the brat here. How much money did he really have that you had to move it out of the country without keeping it yourself?"

"He doesn't know that dad was loaded? Wow, I thought he knew dad pretty well." Catherine asked Naruto all the way across the room, "You knew, didn't you Aniki?"

"Of course I knew." Naruto said before gesturing to the house, "Look at this place. It's huge. And all of the property around here belonged to him… not to mention all of the guns, and ammo that you can find laying around in any room. And the fact that he _bought_ my legal identification… yeah I knew. I never had to ask."

Guys that live like hermits kind of have money because they can afford the land to be alone and afford the supplies to not have to head into town every week. Miller never threw his money around and Naruto never really cared about it, but whenever Naruto was given cash or the bank card to run into town and do errands it was kind of obvious. Especially when he crashed the truck learning how to drive and no one got upset about it.

"And that's why whatever you're doing next, I'm going with you." Catherine said confidently.

And of course Naruto responded in a civil and completely acceptable manner, ever the understanding brother he was, "Are you out of your fucking mind? You're going _with_ me? Not a snowball's chance in hell. I'd rather leave you with them than take you with me!" He said, pointing at Snake and Otacon.

"Hey…" Snake said as he lit another cigarette, "Don't put me in this. I don't babysit kids, rookies, or watch over women. She is some unholy combination of all three. Master Miller's daughter be damned."

"I wasn't asking you to take me anyway Snake. I was talking to the stubborn blonde jackass!" Catherine stood up and walked right over to Naruto to get in his face for the second time that day, "There's no way I'm staying out in the open where those dickheads can use me against you again, and I'm not going to sit back and let you run all over the place looking over your shoulder all the time. I can help."

"And I can just knock you out and leave you here." Naruto said with a deadpan expression, "There's really not anything you can do to me to force me to let you come unless you have a gun or something on you." Catherine then swiftly reached into the cushion of a nearby couch and pulled out an Beretta that Naruto took right out of her hand and disassembled right in front of her face before handing it back, "Yeah… don't do that. I know where all of the guns are too."

"Jerk." Catherine said, looking at the pieces of the handgun in her grasp and wondering how he did that so fast.

"Why don't both of you come work with us?"

Naruto, Snake, and Catherine all turned towards Otacon in surprise as he was the one that voiced the suggestion. Snake blew out a plume of smoke and decided to voice his own concern over the matter, "Otacon why are you asking them that? I thought you of all people wouldn't have wanted Naruto near you. Remember?"

Hearing his name used in stating that Otacon didn't like him, Naruto raised an eyebrow wondering just what he had done, but Otacon just scratched the back of his neck, "Well I did. But there's no reason not to now, right? We're in the same boat here."

'He didn't want me near him?' Naruto thought with a confused expression, 'What'd I do to him? You know, aside from almost shooting him three times by accident… but I blame the stealth camouflage for that.' "So… we're a team now?" He then looked over at Catherine, "But she can't do anything."

"Yes I can." Catherine insisted, "I might not be you or Snake, but I can handle a gun and I can fight a little bit." She saw Naruto open his mouth to prepare to yell again at her and she stuck part of the disassembled gun in her hand in his mouth to shut him up, "I'm not going to be doing that though. You'll need some kind of support for the things you do won't you? Someone needs to take care of you. That much I can see by now."

As Naruto spat out the piece of gun and began sputtering and cursing, Snake looked the girl over as if he were trying to see something that wasn't necessarily in the open, "Put that gun back together for me."

Wondering why he asked her to do such a thing, Catherine didn't argue until she actually bent down to pick up the piece Naruto spit onto the ground, "I shoved that pretty far into his mouth. It's covered in spit. Do I have to?" Snake let out an irritable growl and she hastily picked up the piece before proceeding to make sure everything was in order, reassembling the Beretta with thirty seconds, even taking the safety off and cocking the gun, "There." She then proceeded to tuck the gun into her nearby purse after reapplying the safety, "What was the point of that?"

Snake didn't answer her, instead asking her another question, "The kid has a point. What exactly are you going to do to help us out? Is there anything you're actually good at that matters?"

"Well…" Catherine said bashfully after being put on the spot by Snake, "I'm not much for fighting. I'm really good at finding information, I found you didn't I?" She quipped with a grin before continuing, "… I'm alright as a hacker I think. I'm not ignorant about combat… oh, other than being rich I can fly planes and helicopters… boats too. I even got to learn how to use a tank."

That was news to Naruto, "What?"

Catherine held up two fingers in a victory sign, "My high school had an aviation program and I got my hands on old pirated VR training programs… I think I even stole one on the old Metal Gear D model and learned how to use that for fun to supplement the actual fighting programs. I didn't like those too much."

"For fun?" Otacon said with some skepticism as Snake rolled his eyes, his distaste for the virtual training well-known, "Just like a video game huh?" Maybe he should look into some of that stuff? It'd certainly be more use than sitting in front of a computer screen waiting for a mess to go down the next time around.

"You stole training programs?" Naruto said with a raised eyebrow, "I'm proud, kind of mad, and terrified at the same time." They were probably training programs that the Genome soldiers used in their training. She admitted that they were obsolete, but it wasn't like she was going to try to lift the newer versions without bringing down heat. She did the right thing in taking the old ones… as right as could be done by stealing something.

"And I can actually cook." Catherine added as an afterthought, "I doubt that between the three of you anyone can make anything more complex than a pack of instant ramen, right Aniki?"

It took Naruto a second to realize the reference she was using, "Hey… was that a shot at me?"

"One last question…" Snake said, sounding deadly serious, enough so that Naruto actually moved closer to his sister protectively. The silence that filled the room almost had Otacon holding his breath lest he disturb something, "…How do you feel about smokers or smoking in general?" Otacon exhaled audibly at the stupid question and fought the urge to palm his face.

Both Naruto and Catherine looked at each other, blinking owlishly before the older blonde shrugged and gestured for the younger girl to answer, "Smoking is gross, but then again I don't really care one way or the other." She said, wondering why that was even relevant at all.

"So you wouldn't piss and moan at me for having a cigarette every now and then like some kind of overbearing housewife?" Snake said, directing the rather pointed comment at Otacon's feelings on his longstanding habit.

"No. Just keep it out of my face and we're fine." Catherine said. It wasn't like Snake was one of those guys that needed a cigarette at the most random times, even in the field. He was more professional than that, right?

"Then you're in." Snake said with a satisfied look before turning to Naruto, "She's your responsibility though kid. Like I said, I don't babysit." Somehow it seemed appropriate though to work with the daughter of the man that had trained him extensively and the man that could be seen as his son if one were to look at it from that perspective.

Ignoring Catherine's indignant squawk of 'I'm an adult damn it!', Naruto nodded and pulled the fuming young woman into a one-armed hug, "It's not like she's actually going to be going out to do the active missions herself." He'd be damned if his little sister ended up like him in any way, shape, or form by fighting. And there wasn't a chance in hell he was going to risk her getting killed anymore than already necessary.

Otacon got up from his seat and walked over to Naruto and Catherine with his hand extended, "Well in that case, welcome to Philanthropy." Both of them shook his hand with smiles on their faces, "…For what it's worth these days I guess."

"I thought we were going to go with the 'Dead Terrorists' name." Naruto said while sheepishly grinning, "That sounded catchy to me." At that moment Catherine scrunched her nose up in revulsion and pushed Naruto away from her, alarming him as to the reason, "What's the matter?"

Catherine pointed upstairs with her other hand on her hip, "You need a shower… bad. Now move."

Rolling his eyes, Naruto slogged his way upstairs towards his old room to get something to change into first, "Well sorry for living outside for a week…" He muttered as he made his way up the stairs at Catherine's behest.

"Love you Aniki!"

"Maa!"

While Catherine bounded upstairs to bother Naruto just like old times while they still had the chance at some peace, Snake looked over at Otacon, "So we're going dark… great. Naruto had better be bringing some inside intel to the table here that we didn't already have, because the last thing we need to be doing is to be feeling around blind."

"We do need information though, and Naruto's got to have some concrete stuff." Otacon said as he sat back down and retook his seat. There was no way that he hadn't been given the runaround for something important, "But Naruto seems to think that he wasn't anything more than a hitman for the Patriots. We could try to pick his brain for his mission history, but what do you think we'll actually find?"

"If we can piece together what he's done…" Snake said, thinking aloud as he stroked his chin, "The people he's had to kill, the things he's stolen and spied on… then we can start to maybe get a view of the bigger picture."

XxX

(Two Months Later – Mission Briefing)

Catherine Miller: "Happy birthday Aniki."

Naruto Uzumaki: "It's not my birthday until at least midnight… and I've got to spend it working. Thanks for that you guys."

Solid Snake: "Quit your belly-aching kid. I'm around too. You act like you've never had to work on your birthday before. This is our best opening for you to retrace your own steps in this place. Now suck it up and let's get this done before daybreak. Then you can do whatever you want about turning 21."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Man I wish I had my team for this… All I've got is Snake and I don't think he'll be running to my rescue for this one if it screws up."

Solid Snake: "Damn right. Don't fuck up. This isn't really the place for it."

Otacon: "And don't forget that you don't have your clones for cannon fodder either on this one. You left them with me and Catherine to cover us for your extraction point."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Trust me, I know… and I don't want to hear it out of you Snake. You couldn't notice that there was a damn Cypher in the sky watching us during our fight in New York?"

Solid Snake: "Well you weren't exactly the most attentive one either brat, or do you now qualify as being legally blind? Maybe we should replace you with a younger model? One with less tread on the tires."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Speaking of being old, are you sure you'll be able to keep up grandpa? I don't need Kitty to keep the engines running while we wait for you at the extraction point."

Solid Snake: "I'll show you old you stupid-."

Catherine Miller: "Shut the hell up already! God, it's like dealing with a bunch of babies. I'm about to turn my radio off if this is all I'm going to be hearing out of you two. I already know my part so I don't need to listen to this."

Otacon: "Right, let's get down to business. Catherine's part is fairly simple. She's just meant for the escape. She'll have the seaplane running once she hears that you're all on your way out and we'll be your support team on your Codecs from inside the aircraft. Snake, you'll be heading to the offices to follow up on what we've been talking about for the last few weeks. Naruto… you're heading to the detention camp for your part of the mission."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Of course I am."

Catherine Miller: "Don't be like that Aniki. You're the only one that knows what this guy looks like, and he's the only one that knows what you really stole back then. We need that information so you have to be the one that goes in there."

Solid Snake: "…My part is harder anyway."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Bullshit! I'm warning you old man, I will find you right now and we can switch if that's how you-."

Catherine Miller: "I'm tuning this out before they start up again."

Otacon: "Catherine no. Snake, Naruto, you guys need to calm down. You can beat each other up after this is over and everyone gets back in one piece. Now Snake, we need actual records of what the man Naruto's going to find actually told these people about a huge project we've been hearing about. You're going to hook me into the main servers in the Navy Base part of the location and I'll find it in a hurry. "

Naruto Uzumaki: "About my part of the job; what makes you think that this guy is going to even tell me what I want to know? I am the entire reason he's here by the way. And I don't want to try any torture or anything… I feel guilty enough as it is."

Solid Snake: "You'd better get over that pretty quickly. Besides, you can't afford to interrogate a prisoner here kid. There's no opportunity for it."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Are you sure we can't extract him?"

Solid Snake: "Do you want the Patriots to start messing with you again while we still know nothing about who they are? It's only been two months and we're doing a pretty good job of staying underground even with you two blonde brats with us. Don't mess it up. What are we going to do afterwards if you did break him out? Now's not the time."

Naruto Uzumaki: "Fine… but I don't have to like it."

Solid Snake: "Yeah, well don't pull a Sniper Wolf here… that was a good one. Everyone thought you had actually killed her."

Naruto Uzumaki: "I know. That was the whole point. I had to watch Otacon cry, remember?"

Catherine Miller: "Aw… Otacon, Aniki made you cry? That's so mean. He should apologize to you."

Otacon: "Can we just start the mission now please? I really don't want to hear about how I cried… I was there. So let's begin shall we?"

XxX

(Infiltration of Guantanamo Bay)

Primary Objectives:  
>-Find any information on a new major Metal Gear-level project being conducted in secret. (Snake)<br>-Infiltrate the detention camp of the base and locate the target VIP prisoner. Proceed to obtain whatever information of importance that landed him there that can be given or received. (Naruto)  
>-Leave no trace of your presence at either facility (Paramount Objective for both). Weapons are procure-on-site.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>And that's chapter. Nothing in particular to say other than I'm kind of pissed off right now, but what else is new? So there you have it. Catherine is going to be a radio support for those of you aware of what that means in the games. She will not fight per se, but she will be his directory towards the information he needs, someone to talk to in intense moments, etc.<strong>

**A short mission next chapter and we'll move on from there. More stuff will be explained and whatnot, faces will be seen, some time will be skipped... you know, the good stuff.  
><strong>

**So until next time folks, Kenchi out.**


	21. The Puzzle That is Your Life

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. This isn't over yet Kishimoto… Kojima…

By the way Kojima… anytime you want to release Metal Gear Solid: Rising… you can just get around to doing that. Because I've been waiting almost four goddamn years to fight like a cyborg ninja Raiden and daddy needs his acrobatics.

**Chapter 21: The Puzzle That is Your Life**

* * *

><p>(October 10th, 2007 - Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – 4 Miles North of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base – Naruto: Age 21)<p>

Naruto emerged from the waters of Guantanamo Bay on the southern shore, water dripping from his frame clad in the sneaking suit he wore in New York and from his matted down blonde locks. The facemask of the outfit was up over his mouth and nose ala his old sensei Kakashi, but any nostalgia was lost on Naruto as he momentarily pulled the cloth down to spit some water out on the ground as he started walking up, "Swim from shore-to-shore Kitty says. Water-walking would make you stick out like a sore thumb she says. She can swim that shit next time herself, dattebayo."

Snake had the larger actual naval base to go through for his part of the mission, but that meant more places to hide. Naruto was going to the isolated, almost legendary highest detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. One that a lot of people weren't even sure existed until a year prior. Camp Seven, or Camp Platinum. And its location was a complete secret… but it was all a matter of looking at the blanks on the map and breaking it down from there.

It wasn't very big and it was obviously hard to find, but for someone like Otacon, to find the location of the camp in the square miles that the U.S. Government possessed of Guantanamo Bay it was fairly easy... especially if one had already broken into the Pentagon's files in the past. If Catherine could learn how to hack like that it would be scary because Otacon was damnably impressive at it himself.

And he wound up coming upon the camp and its dark surroundings as he was able to find that it was a small, grey fortress-looking building with no windows or anything, able to blend in with the dirt that surrounded it in case anyone ever got a view from above. No lights to help identify the location to anyone watching around, which meant that the guards watching from outside would obviously have some kind of equipment to help them see any possible intruders or escapees if there would ever be a possibility of that.

Then there was the problem that he couldn't see shit because it was the _exact_ night of the new moon phase. This mission seriously couldn't have waited two weeks until when it was full moon and he could actually see something?

Fucking Snake and his procure-on-site B.S. protocol. He'd be damned if he wasn't bringing some eyewear so he didn't trip a trap and blow everything just because he couldn't see. Thus he came with his own night-vision goggles since he did not have sonar or natural nocturnal vision.

It wasn't like he could just kick a guard's ass and take their night-vision goggles, because when that guy woke up he'd know that he had just been knocked out and that would set off alarms somewhere if or when it got out.

That was the reason he had left his HF Blade and his knives and other bladed weapons with Otacon and Catherine, because if he had them he might have killed someone by accident. There was to be absolutely no fighting, period. No one could even have an inkling that anyone was ever there.

Luckily he at least had the Solar Gun that was built into the forearm of his suit fully charged in case he actually did have to fight his way out, but he was most certainly not counting on that circumstance.

Well therein came the advantage of having a team, as he quickly tuned his Codec to the appropriate frequency and called, "Hey Kitty. I'm at the sneak point and I'm starting, but I've got a problem already. I know the guards patrolling outside can see me if I tried to sneak over to check for a way in. Getting close would have at least one of them see me no matter what."

There was silence at first with some chattering between the two support members before Catherine spoke up, _"Otacon says that you wouldn't have any problems if you had Soliton Radar. You'd have their field of vision to look at in the corner of your screen."_

Naruto's jaw went slack before snapping shut in anger, "The corner of my scree-? What? Well I don't have any goddamn Soliton Radar. If he has the system then please feel free to hook it up for the next time I have to do some shit like this."

"_Hey yeah. Why'd you even bring that up if you didn't give it to Aniki? Does Snake have it?"_ Catherine asked before more talking from presumably Otacon, giving Catherine her answer to relay to Naruto, _"Oh. Well they lost access to the satellite after the whole Tanker Incident. The U.N. didn't exactly want to keep lending their satellite to a 'terrorist group' like Philanthropy… even if Snake's supposed to be dead."_

"That's just great… because I can't even see how many fingers I'm holding up in front of my face right now without the goggles it's so dark." Wait. It was dark. For some reason he had an idea, "Hold that thought. I think I've got a good diversion."

"_Is this a stupid diversion?"_

"It's stupid _good_."

"_Don't get caught please."_

"Wouldn't dream of it Kitty. Later." Naruto then ended the transmission and charged up his solar gun. This was going to waste a lot of his weapon's stored energy, but it wouldn't matter once he got past the guards. Turning towards the bay, he charged up a single shot and released it all at once to send it flying over the darkened waters, looking something like a UFO. And with the sporadic and unreliable distant aim of the weapon, when it curved directly upward into the sky, the large ball of light really did look like something alien.

"Did you see that?"

"What was that thing?"

That was what Naruto wanted to hear; the sounds of confusion and maybe panic. And the heavy footsteps of boots on the sand were downright musical to him as he angled himself out of the sight of the night-vision goggle wearing sentries as they ran to the waterside to look out and see what they had missed.

Naruto took this opportunity to slip on past them and short out the electric lock with his lightning release powers to go right through the front door, 'No cameras even for security… a little too privacy conscious don't you think?' Naruto thought to himself as he began making his way inside.

XxX

(With Snake – Guantanamo Bay Naval Base)

Snake had broken into the commander of the base's house first and foremost since a lot of people took their work home with them, even the sensitive stuff. After finding nothing, not even the commander himself, he vacated the premises in a hurry and hustled his way through the dark to the check-in gate of the actual functional part of the gate that was off-limits to those that were not personnel.

Getting past that was also child's play. But then when he arrived outside of the main offices of the base he had to pause… because the whole building was lit up like the Fourth of July, "Geez… you think you've got enough lights turned on? All you're missing are signal lights for planes and choppers to land." At that moment his Codec went off and he quickly answered it to get rid of the beeping in his head, "Yeah Otacon? I'm just outside of the offices right now. Getting in is going to be a pain."

"_That seems to be a reoccurring theme tonight. Naruto ran into some trouble getting into Camp Platinum a little while ago."_

"He probably tried to push open a door that needed to be pulled." Snake quipped before hearing some muffled chatter on the line, possibly from Naruto's younger sister, "What's going on?"

"_Nothing… but Catherine said you can't have any of Naruto's cake when she makes it today once we finish. Something about you picking on him for no reason. Ah! But what's the problem you're having getting into the offices again?"_

Stingy brat… she'd better give him some damn cake. He was working too, "It's too well lit out here. It's ridiculous… what a waste of electricity. Long story short, there's no way I'm getting in through conventional means. Any ideas?"

"…_Well, we have one."_

"Lay it on me then."

"_Do you think you can get into the sewage system?"_

"…Damn it."

XxX

(With Naruto – Camp Platinum – 4 Miles North of the Naval Base)

'This place is depressing as hell.' Naruto thought to himself as he moved through the shadowy halls of the compact building. It was seriously intended for nothing more than holding prisoners in its purest form. There were nothing more than cells and noise generators in the hall to make sure that those imprisoned couldn't hear anything other than what was in their own cells, 'This is where they send guys to just disappear forever…'

The cell doors had a single narrow window to look into, and Naruto needed his night-vision goggles just to see within them. No windows inside, no natural light, the best anyone within would get was the dingy fluorescent lighting in the hall outside that barely let anyone navigate the place. At least the lack of light made it exceptionally easy for Naruto to hide within the dark. No one inside was using goggles that he had come across, as why would they waste the batteries when they could see enough to move about.

It wasn't like anyone would get that far into 'Gitmo' and actually find the hidden detention camp, right? An assignment like this was a gimme for anyone set to patrol the halls. And it would continue to be after that night because Naruto wasn't planning on having his presence detected by anyone other than the person he had come to see.

'Okay.' Naruto thought as he stuck to the ceiling and crawled along it to evade the patrolling guard. He passed by every three minutes, so once he found the right cell he would have three minutes to do anything before having to hide again, 'Come on… where are you?' After the guard passed out of his sight again he started a countdown in his head and dropped soundlessly from the ceiling to begin searching.

Eventually he stopped upon looking into one of the cells, his night-vision goggles able to make out the figure huddled in the room, "Colonel Jackson." He said to himself before making a few hand-seals to begin channeling lightning chakra to his hands that he used to disrupt the lock on the door, quickly slipping inside and shutting the door before the lock and the security system became active once more.

"Who's there?"

The voice sounded tired. Just what had been happening to him in there? This was not the slightly sarcastic, yet in control and confident man that had been giving him his marching orders from two years, "Kami Colonel… what did they do to you?"

"…Rapture?"

"In the flesh."

"If I could see you and get up to take a swing at you I might feel like doing it."

"I'd probably let you… you look like hell Colonel." Naruto said with a frown on his face, not that it could be seen in the pitch dark.

Jackson let out a humorless laugh as he sat up on the small bed in his cell, "Yeah, well they threw me in here right after your little 'attack' went public. They frame you, and then they throw me in here when no one outside of Dead Cell could even link us together… it seems like overcompensating to me."

A nod came from Naruto before he looked around the room, goggles still on. There were no windows, no lights, a steel toilet, and that was it, "So two months? What about your wife? What'd they tell her?"

"Helena…" Jackson said, shaking his head before sighing and looking back up at Naruto, "They gave her some bullshit about corruption charges and misappropriation of government funds… they black-marked the pay I issued you and the resources set aside for you so that you could do your job. The same things given to every member of Dead Cell, and they pinched me for it because they scapegoated you and wanted mouths shut."

"Why didn't they just kill you?"

"I don't know… maybe to find you? During interrogation they ask me the status of operative 'Rapture'. They seem to want to find you again kid."

So that meant that the grunts doing the interrogation weren't given parameters to extract info on Naruto, at least not overtly by name since they weren't given it, just his codename. Maybe to keep even them from knowing that they were searching for a 'dead' man, "To hell with that. They'll find me again, right before I put a bullet into their heads or a blade through their hearts."

"Well give them one for me too." Jackson said, sitting against the wall by his bed and letting his head softly smack against it with a thud, "I'm not getting out of here. This is just a preamble… after they're done with me they're going to need this space. They'll send me to Leavenworth. To lock me up and throw away the key… bastards."

'Three minutes.' Naruto thought to himself before letting out a quick shush and ducking into a corner of the room as a shadow passed by the small window at the cell door. He gave the guard doing rounds of the place time to get further away from the cell before talking again, "I have to ask you something Colonel. You were my handler even when I had to go on missions for the Patriots. Everything I did I reported to you and handed right over to you after I was done."

Jackson let out a few coughs due to his environment, "*coughs* Yeah? Which one in particular? You know who you killed, you always got the backgrounds, so I'm guessing you're talking about your smuggler's runs."

"In January you sent me to Mumbai." Naruto began as he mentally dredged up the mission in question. The last real assassination he had been sent on prior to the Tanker Incident, "I had to kill one particular programmer and retrieve anything he had on him." Not very hard, but something about it didn't go well with him or anyone else he told the mission to, "So I took his money, I.D., flashdrives, and his briefcase. In his briefcase was a black box that I couldn't break into. When I came back the briefcase was all that you wanted, you didn't even look at the flashdrives. What did I steal?"

Silence rolled through the room, even way past the three minute span between the patrolman walking past the cell door window. As a matter of fact it actually took closer to five minutes for Jackson to speak up, "Jesus kid… I told you to run. You should have just taken your ass to New Zealand or something, found a cute girl to settle with, and stayed away like a good soldier."

"Well I've been told by more than one person that I'm a bad soldier when it comes to taking my orders." Naruto tried to joke before getting serious as he hadn't gotten Jackson to lighten up any, "They can't keep doing this to people Colonel. If I don't try to do anything… then who will? Who's ever going to find out enough about the Patriots to make a move on them if I don't? Now come on… tell me what I stole."

Still reluctant to give Naruto what he wanted, Jackson took another moment before speaking, "Fine. You want to know what you took? You took the blueprints for the ultimate scanning and filtering device."

"Scanning and filtering? What?" Naruto said, tilting his head in confusion. Even in the dark, Jackson knew that was exactly Naruto had done as he could hear his tone and could just imagine the confused look on his face.

"Luddite…" Jackson muttered, getting an indignant 'Oi!' out of Naruto before he continued, "That man you killed had created a program that when integrated with another main computer program could look for and identify abnormality or undesirable bugs in the main program; glitches in programming, human-made mistakes, etc. It was meant to be the ultimate debugging tool, and was meant to assist in the beta testing of software devices… but he was thinking too small with that one. Or too big I guess since you were sent to kill him and retrieve the finished product for the Patriots."

"Thinking too small?" If only the gist of Naruto's computer education hadn't consisted of Master Miller teaching him how to use a mouse, the keyboard, AOL, and thumping him on the back of the head when he wound up wandering onto a porn site for the first time.

"Hell Rapture, I'm not a computer guy." Jackson stood up out of his bed and slowly and gingerly walked his way over to Naruto in the dark who stood to let him know where he was, "But that's what you stole. I'm more than certain that your tormentors really care about easy debugging when they had you steal that. I don't even know what they needed it for… way above my head."

Well that filled in a major blank that had been a blight on Naruto's mission history that he couldn't identify. Perhaps they could stitch together just what the goal for the Patriots happened to be with this?

"Thank you Colonel." Naruto said earnestly with a sorrowful expression, "I'm going to get you out somehow. I can't do it now. But I'm going to get you out of here. That's a-."

"If you make that promise kid I'll castrate you." Jackson threatened Naruto, grabbing the loose neck of his sneaking suit to drag Naruto towards him as forcefully as he could.

Even then Naruto could feel how weak he was due to his probable repeated torture sessions and his imprisonment conditions. It made him downright angry that someone that had never done him any wrong was put in this situation _because_ of him, "But why? You didn't do anything wrong. This isn't right. I can't let things like this happen if I can do something about it."

"You wouldn't even get off of the premises with me. I know I'm not your objective for being here so don't take on more than you bargain for." Jackson said, still holding on to Naruto to make sure that the young man listened to him intently, "This room is a good metaphor for your situation; you're feeling around in the dark, barely able to locate your own ass. Instead of fumbling around aimlessly trying to find others to drag out with you…" He then turned Naruto towards the cell door and the tiny window, "…You should take your own shot to get back to the light while you have the chance, because you can always go back into the dark if you want to. Now get the hell out of here."

A forceful release from his former commanding officer and Naruto just stood staring at him in the dark with his night-vision goggles active. He then turned them off and took them from around his eyes to stare into the dark of the cell until the shadow outside of the cell passed by the window once more.

If one could have seen Naruto's eyes in the dark, the idea of leaving Jackson there got Naruto's eyes to flicker red before he stanched the feeling, 'Philanthropy's motto is to let the world be… but what if the world is shit?' There wasn't enough room in the seaplane they were using to extract to take more than four people and the equipment that Otacon and Catherine were using as well, "Yes sir…"

"Goodbye Rapture."

"…See you soon Colonel."

"You'd better not."

And with that and a quick channeling of electricity to disrupt the lock and the alarm again, Naruto opened the cell door and left quickly to find a way to escape the facility without leaving a trace anywhere.

XxX

(With Snake – Guantanamo Bay Naval Base – Main Offices)

The sewers, though not Snake's ideal method of infiltration, worked wonders towards getting him inside through the basement of the offices. He eventually popped up from a manhole cover set in the concrete floor of said basement after traversing the empty sewers.

The mission restriction on fighting sort of tied Snake's hands as he had to wait around for extended periods of time before moving from place to place, but eventually he reached a stairwell that took him right to the fifth floor where he wanted to go.

"_All right Snake."_ Otacon said as Snake had managed to get himself into the commander's office and got to his computer, which was where he ran into a dead end, _"Since you're not going to break into that computer anytime soon."_ Snake growled in annoyance at a shortcoming being brought up, _"Right… moving on. I'm going to need you to plug in the flash device I gave you. It's set to copy all documents and non-native images and accoutrements automatically."_

After receiving his instruction from his technologically advanced partner, Snake watched as a small red light started blinking on the flash device, "How long is this going to take?"

"_It depends on how much is on the hard drive. It could take up to five minutes. When the red light stops blinking and turns solid green you can remove it and leave. Until then you'll have to-."_

"Wait." Snake whispered, ducking tightly behind the desk as he saw figures walking in front of the closed door office outside, trying to look through the glass, "I didn't do anything to let the guards know I was here." So why were they looking in an office that he knew full well they wouldn't have otherwise?

There was really no time to think about that as the lock began to jiggle on the door. Even though it was dark in there, anyone with decent room-sweeping skill would see him within seconds. With that in mind, Snake looked around for any possible solution to his issue, eyes gleaming as he spotted just what he needed to escape his situation.

The door to the office swung open as two men started looking in from the doorway, scanning the room and not seeing anything no matter where they walked around to look, "Are you going to stop babbling about a friggin' smell now or what?"

"I know I smelled something though…"

"Duh." The first guard said as he walked around the desk, making sure not to trip over the stupid cardboard box at the end of it, "It's like the lingering smell of shit. It's on the whole damn floor. Deal with it. Talk to the maintenance guy when he comes in this morning."

"Fine…"

The two started to leave the room with the first guard still choosing to razz the other, "How you picked _this_ room for the source of the smell I'll never know. You want to check the hall closets next? We can do this all night you know." He jabbed at his partner as he shut the door.

After a few seconds to let the pair get away from the office, the cardboard box sitting next to the desk began to ruffle and turned to the side to show a looking space cut out of it. Snake stood up from his place in the upturned box and cast it aside, a satisfied look on his face at getting away scot free. He then smelled himself and scowled as he realized that he had taken some of the funk out of the sewer with him.

"_A box? Did he really just hide from armed guards in a cardboard box and get away with it?"_ Catherine's disbelieving voice could be heard speaking over the line from the pick-up range of Otacon's headset microphone.

Snake then spoke on his Codec that he obviously hadn't shut off while he had been hiding under his cardboard box as he went to the computer to check on the status of the flash device, "Hey Otacon, whose idea was it for me to get in here through the sewer?"

Hearing the ire in Snake's tone, Otacon took a moment before answering, _"Um… Catherine's?"_ He then heard a smack over the line, _"Ow! Okay I'm sorry!"_

"Uh huh…" Snake said as he saw that the device was showing the green light and he ducked down to retrieve it, "That means it was your idea. You can clean this suit after I get back then. I'm on the way out." With that, Snake slipped out of the office and began making his way back downstairs to try and escape from the same way he had gotten in, whether he liked it or not.

XxX

(Three Hours Later – Northern Shore of Guantanamo Bay)

"It's been a while since we've heard anything." Otacon commented as he sat in the passenger's seat of a seaplane sitting in a concealed cove, "You think they ran into trouble?" He asked the girl sitting in the main spot manning the controls.

Catherine shook her head, "Then they would have called us for sure." She looked over towards the east where she could see the most minute flecks of light shining up, "I wish they'd hurry though. I really don't want to take off in sunlight and risk being seen."

After a few more minutes of sitting around on their hands and waiting, the sounds of swimming strokes could be heard, getting both Catherine and Otacon to look over and see both Naruto and Snake swimming towards them. With a grin on her face, Catherine threw open a backdoor for both of them to get into the plane from.

Naruto climbed in first and crawled on the floor before sitting on a seat. He didn't care if he was wet or not, "I couldn't water-walk again because?" He asked irritably as he shamelessly began to strip out of his sneaking equipment, "I'd have been here two hours ago if I could have just ran with the old man on my back like I wanted to."

"I don't need you carrying me, and I'm not old brat." Snake said as he climbed into the plane and decided to wait for his suit to quick-dry the way it usually did before sitting down, "I'm just 35, so cut the senior-citizen crap."

"35 is old." Naruto quipped back as he used a towel to dry his head, hair, and the parts of his arms that his suit exposed had exposed while he had been in the water; biceps to shoulders.

Otacon leaned over to Catherine to try and whisper out of Naruto's earshot, "Someone's upset about something." He said, referring to the scowl on Naruto's face and the pissed off manner in which he slumped in his seat, "Hey Naruto, are you alright? You said you'd found who you were looking for and that Colonel Jackson had told you what you needed to know about your mission."

"He did." Naruto said, crossing his arms over his bare chest as he sat in his seat, not caring that he was in his underwear at that point, "But I can't free him. I was right there, I knew that it was wrong for him to be there, I wanted to do something, but I just left him there. Damn it, this is so messed up!" He punched the metal door of the plane before settling back down.

The others in the plane were silent until Snake looked around and sighed, "Let's get this thing into the air and get out of her while we can." Catherine nodded and started firing the plane up, preparing to take off. Snake's suit, now dry enough to sit down, took a seat next to Naruto who was just looking out of the window angrily at the night's events, "Kid you know why we couldn't take him with us."

"No room on the plane with us and all of the stuff, the Patriots would find out that we sprang him from Gitmo and would be after me and maybe you again, and he could still have been a decoy or a spy."

Hearing the robotic way Naruto rattled off the reasons that escaping with Jackson wouldn't have been beneficial for them, Snake frowned, "Listen I know this messes with your internal code of honor or whatever you call it, but you knew what this was going to be about when we told you of the mission. I would have gone if you said you didn't want to."

"No." Naruto said, shaking his head before looking over at Snake with a hollow expression on his face, "If you'd gone you would have said something about me to get him to talk. If he was going to have to take a slap in the face like that then it should have been me to do it." To ask for help from someone that was there because of him and then not free them, it didn't sit well with him at all.

"Self-loathing doesn't fit you." Snake commented as Catherine began circling to gain speed to prepare to take off, "If it bothers you that much then just redeem yourself with later actions. Or if you really can't think of a way to do that just bottle it up and take it out on the bastards responsible for all of this when you find them."

The plane lifted off from the surface of the water, but Naruto barely registered it, "That's the one thing I'm not going to do. I'm not going to fight the Patriots for revenge. Fighting someone like them for revenge is like shooting yourself just to try and hurt them with the kick of the recoil. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do. And because someone has to."

"You killed Liquid for revenge after what he did to Master Miller."

"I was going to kill Liquid that night anyway. Finding out that he had Master Miller killed just to fool you just made me angry when I did it." Naruto admitted towards his mindset during the end of the incident on Shadow Moses Island, "Wanting revenge makes you do stupid stuff to get it. And I'm not selling my soul just for a swing at those pieces of crap."

Catherine's eyes were firmly in front of her as she focused on taking off. She had ignored a lot of that conversation due to the visual diversion in one of the back seats, "Okay, Aniki, I'm going to need you to put some clothes on… because you're distracting me." Her face was noticeably red as she said this.

Naruto blinked and snapped out of his funk, noticing his current state of lack of dress and raised an eyebrow, "Wait a minute, you still think like that? It's been two years since we had that conversation and you're still-."

"Just put some pants and a shirt on already damn it!"

A pair of sweatpants and a white t-shirt were both thrown at Naruto's head by Snake due to Catherine's request.

XxX

(Sometime Later – Undisclosed Location)

"Welcome back Queen." Vamp said with a grin as a new person walked into the room that already had Fatman, Old Boy, and Chinaman there. All three other Dead Cell operatives paid attention to the person as she strode through with a cold expression on her face, "Any luck?"

"None. It wasn't him… again." The woman was of African-American descent but had blonde hair that reached her back and wore combat boots, a dark sleeveless skintight bodysuit that cut off right where her thighs started, as well as a brown trench coat draped loosely over her shoulders, "That stupid bastard isn't dead. If there was no body he isn't dead. And if he isn't currently dead then his life belongs to me."

Vamp shook his head and walked over to her before placing a hand on her shoulder, "It's only a matter of time then. Rapture is good, but he just doesn't have your luck in the end. He's very… unfortunate. Pretty much the antithesis of your codename; Fortune."

Chinaman let out a scoff, "You're not the only one that wants to cut the Jap-brat's bleeding heart out Queen." The head of the full-body dragon tattoo seemed to move slightly on Chinaman's face as if it could sense his anger, "If I ever beat you to him you'll just have to hear of the way I made him beg for my mercy since I'll be the one killing him."

Seeming to keep to himself, Old Boy cursed vehemently in German, the only thing available for those that weren't multilingual was that he said Naruto's name in between spurts of profane language.

"He killed my father… and he's the reason my husband is in prison." Fortune clenched her fists tightly in anger as tears pricked at her eyes. Even months later the sting was still felt, "And with all of the misfortune my mother couldn't handle it and she killed herself as well." She walked forward away from Vamp a few yards, her back shown to him. Without warning, Vamp reached for a throwing knife and chucked it at her neck, only for it to veer off-course past her and bounce off of a metal wall of the room they were in, "_Rapture_… can't kill me. No one can. Luck on the battlefield, and nowhere else."

After turning towards the wall where the knife flew, a few amused chuckles came from Fatman before turning into deep laughter, "You really are Lady Luck aren't you?" He hadn't felt anything one way or the other when Jackson had been arrested, except for amusement, but since Fortune had joined Dead Cell upon the discovery of her incredible ability things had been more entertaining for the bald mad bomber than ever.

Fortune ignored him and turned towards the wall where the knife flew to find that the knife Vamp had thrown at her that had missed wound up hitting a poster that was stuck to the wall. The poster had Naruto's face on it and an 'x' crossed through it, with the knife buried right in the middle of his forehead.

XxX

(Four Months Later)

_A forest?_

_Why the hell was he in a forest? He fell asleep inside the safehouse. Damn it, if this was Catherine or Snake trying to prank him again he was going to show them why he was not to be messed with in that department._

_Naruto sat up from his place on the forest floor and looked around lazily, not seeing the safehouse anywhere in sight, "Assholes. This shit wasn't funny in Edmonton, I don't see why they'd do it again. They know I'm just going to get them back." He dusted himself off and stood up to start trying to find his bearings, "How far away did they take me? And why am I dressed?" Naruto was even in his operational gear._

_Another thing was strange though. The forest was familiar. He didn't smell any sort of pollution in the air at all, something he had become accustomed to in the forests of the world he lived in today. The last time he had ever really smelled the cleanest air possible he had been in the Elemental Nations…_

_And just like that, Naruto took off towards the north. If he was really there then he had to see for himself. He ran as fast as he could until he heard a sniper shot ring out, stopping him in his tracks as the shell hit the tree directly in front of him. He turned around to look in the direction he heard the shot coming from and decided to hightail it lest he actually take a bullet the next time._

_But as he turned around he found a Desert Eagle pointed right in his face._

_BANG_

_A log in Naruto's place fell to the ground with a bullet stuck inside of it. Better it than his head._

"_Meryl what the fuck?" Naruto shouted, about to deliver a kick to her stomach out of retaliation before another sniper shot grazed the leg he was about to use to kick her, 'Wait… Meryl. So does that mean-?' Automatic gunfire rang out that was supposed to be directed at him, but missed wide and didn't even get close, 'Johnny's here too.' He didn't even have to look to deduce that such horrible shooting was from none other than Johnny Sasaki. No one else was possibly that bad, 'So Wolf's got to be shooting at me!' "What are you guys doing?"_

"_You left us to go play lapdog for the Patriots!" Meryl shouted, turning her gun back towards Naruto again but found her aim struck aside by Naruto backhand striking the weapon and kicking her away before he took off running, "We trusted you! You ruined our lives!" Naruto simply took off running again to try and get away from her, Johnny, and Wolf's scope, "Go ahead and run again you coward! All you're good for is running and hiding!"_

'_This dream is total shit! And not even for the usual reason!' Naruto thought as he continued to run through the forest, coming to a sudden stop as he found himself at a ledge overlooking the Valley of the End, "Why is this happening?" He then heard the sound of birds chirping, a sound he hadn't heard in almost ten years and it froze him solid._

"_Chidori (One Thousand Birds)__!"_

_As the pain of having the electrified hand shoved through his chest filled his body and paralyzed a yell in his throat before he could even get it out, Naruto found himself back in the same clothing he had worn at the age of twelve, same height and everything as well._

_Naruto turned his head to see Sasuke giving him a Sharingan enhanced glare with a smirk on his face, "Some friend you are Naruto. You couldn't even stop me from running off to the most evil man you had ever met. Our village's worst enemy. You weren't even strong enough to stay alive to try again later. Your promises mean nothing because you're too pathetic to keep them."_

_The cocking of a gun got Naruto to turn his head back forward to find Olga pointing a gun at his face with the coldest expression he had ever seen set firmly in her eyes, "You promised me Uzumaki. You said that everything would be alright. All talk. You watched my father die and didn't even get Ocelot for the trouble. What did you accomplish? You failed your best friend."_

"_Again." Sasuke added, his arm still shoved through Naruto's torso through the back, "Seems like when it comes down to it, you can't do anything you thought you could."_

"_I told you I would kill you Uzumaki." Olga said before her finger slowly started to pull on the trigger of the weapon in Naruto's face._

"_**I told you, you're still just a weak bag of flesh boy!"**_

XxX

(Mid February 2008 – Washington State/Canadian Border)

Naruto's eyes opened and his breath hitched from the nightmare he had just had. He didn't sit up or awaken with more of a start because his dreams were usually more of a horrendous nature than the one he had just experienced.

Still, what he did was more than enough to wake up Catherine who was sleeping next to him in the bed, "Aniki, what's the matter?" She said as she started blinking tiredly at her fellow blonde. In the moonlight coming through the window she was attentive enough to see the cold sweat on his person and frowned at the bags under his eyes that were more prevalent at night, "You had the nightmare where the Dr. Clark lady was doing experiments on you again didn't you?" She guessed since that was the one that plagued him more nights than not.

"No. This one was new." Now that it was clear that his attempt to control his own reaction to his nightmare had failed, Naruto sat up in the twin-sized bed and let his legs dangle over the side. He wasn't getting back to sleep that night so all he had to do was wait for Catherine to go back to sleep so he could get up and try to get stuff done.

However she didn't just roll back over and go to sleep. She usually didn't even though she acted like she did. Catherine let out a sigh and sat up on her elbows in the bed, "We need to figure out how to fix you Aniki. You can't do this forever. Is this how you were sleeping before I ever even got here."

"Yeah, pretty much." Naruto admitted. And it was… when he actually let himself try to get sleep. While working with Dead Cell he didn't like sleeping around them and only did so when necessary, "And we can't fix this. Even you can't get me to relax enough to stop them." He stood up and grabbed a shirt from the floor to walk around the safehouse in since he was not going to try sleeping again lest his next nightmare end up with him strangling his little sister in the real world by accident, "Just don't worry about it alright? Everything'll be fine."

With the bed mostly vacated with the exception of herself, Catherine let her elbows give out and fell back on the bed with a solid thump as she stared up at the ceiling gloomily, "Just because you've been dealing with it for years doesn't mean that it's fine…" She said to herself quietly after he had left the small room.

Meanwhile Naruto walked out into the main room of the small building they were staying in for the time being to find Otacon sitting in front of the tech setup that he had enacted for the temporary instant they were there.

The scientist was searching away for something on his computer and seemed to be working on three things at once. Snake wasn't around, so that was the main topic to address once Naruto sat down in a chair next to Otacon, startling him momentarily until he realized that it was just Naruto, "Oh hey." Otacon said to the young blonde soldier, "You're up early again… it's 4 a.m." He heard Naruto let out a sigh as he rubbed his eyes, "I guess if every time I tried to sleep I had torture flashbacks I wouldn't be a big fan of it either. And it's always been like this?"

"Since 2003." Naruto said, blocking a yawn while speaking, "So I suppose Snake's outside to have a smoke while he makes you do all of the brainwork."

A nod came from Otacon as he went back to focusing on his work on the computer, "Yeah, he's bored. While we're out here we're trying to find that lab that you and Gray Fox were held at a few years ago, but with nothing more to go on than that it was at the U.S./Canadian border I don't think we're going to find it again."

"There won't be anything there anyway." Snake said as he walked back inside from his smoke break, finishing off the last dregs of his cigarette before keeping it to get rid of later. No need to leave a trail due to his own self-destructive vices, "You and Gray Fox destroyed that place on the way out, right?"

Well, technically Kyuubi-possessed Naruto had destroyed the place on the way out. Gray Fox had killed almost one hundred soldiers and Dr. Clark herself while making a hell of a mess as he made his way above ground, but Naruto had been the one to mop up the rest and raze the place to the ground in the end.

And any cleanup crew worth a damn wouldn't have left a trace of the facility that would have been easy to find. So even if they would have been able to find the original base, which was doubtful with 600 miles of forested border to scour trying to find the exact place, now they wouldn't even have anything above ground to look for.

"So we're still stuck trying to figure out what you stole that device for the Patriots for." Snake continued, momentarily putting a hand on Naruto's shoulder before looking at Otacon, "Do you have anything on that yet?"

"No idea." Otacon said, lifting his glasses to rub his eyes tiredly, "It's a hell of a creation though… but I don't like it. It takes too much of the human element out of computer programming at its very core. I mean, people program what they consider to be mistakes into the debugging program, but what if it gets rid of something that the creator didn't think was a mistake? And even if it did, imperfections and mistakes are what give things charm, what makes our accomplishments so special."

It was kind of a confusing thought to wonder what the Patriots would have ever wanted to use it for functionally. Maybe to scout out all of the possible flaws in the next Metal Gear design. It didn't seem likely though.

Naruto just sat in the dark room with only the light of the computers and the other devices going to illuminate things and leaned back in his chair, "You don't need me for this part. I want to go to Russia now."

"Now?" Snake said in near disbelief, "We figured out what we did about New York Harbor and you want to go now? We should be figuring out how to stop that thing from going up. This can wait."

"I've been waiting for over six months Snake." Naruto said with an impatient tone, "I need to go see them." He'd been calm, he'd not made a big deal out of it. And time hadn't made him any less eager to find anything out about just how they were all doing after what had happened on the Tanker. They'd all been working their asses off, and they had finally reached a stopping point. He was sick of sitting around on his hands getting lazy as Otacon did all of the work to break things down for them to eventually understand.

Snake's intel that he had lifted during his half of the Guantanamo Bay mission alluded to a need for personnel to head out from the base up to New York to watch over the construction of an offshore cleanup facility meant to handle a disaster of that size. Not any engineers or anything like that, purely military personnel. And while that was understandable from the standpoint of the basis of the coverup on how terrorist group Philanthropy caused the disaster of spilling the oil in the first place, they knew it was for something else.

The only problem at that point was figuring out how to handle that particular situation.

"You _want_ to go see them."

"Is that so wrong?"

It hadn't been the first time that the two of them had butted heads on the matter. The first time had been three weeks after they had started working together. The only thing that had stopped them from coming to blows then and there was the help of the other two non-combatants on the side to keep things as civil as possible.

But this time there was to be no backing down as far as Naruto was concerned. It wasn't like he was asking Snake to do something like storm a fortress. As a matter of fact, Snake didn't have to do anything except watch over Catherine until he got back and that wouldn't be long.

"You don't even know how to find them again kid."

Naruto rolled his eyes, "The most prominent mercenary unit in Russia. How hard do you think it'll be to find them? I'll be gone for two weeks. Maybe three if it's harder than I think." He stood up, sliding his chair back in the process as he was sick of just sitting around, "If you don't have an actual reason for me to stay here I'm going to go get dressed, grab my board, and I'm out of here now while nothing's going on. I can be in Alaska by sunrise, I can be over the Bering by noon."

It wasn't like Naruto didn't know exactly what he was saying. He knew his board worked, he knew how fast it was, and he knew how to traverse the Bering Strait by himself, "You're going to go no matter what I say… so go on and get the hell out of here." Snake said, getting a grin out of Naruto, "But if you get discovered-."

"I'll cover the whisker-marks, slick back the hair. Maybe pop in some contacts and nobody'll know it's me unless I want them to." Naruto said, waving over his shoulder as he walked to the room to get his own gear to leave, "And tell me where you're going next in case you leave before I get back."

"If we leave then we'll just have Catherine leave you a code somewhere so you can figure it out yourself." Otacon said nonchalantly, "Go ahead and do what you feel you have to." His cheeks then turned red somewhat, "And if you see her… would you tell Wolf I said hi." Snake palmed his face and shook his head at Otacon still acting like a shy teenager when it came to Sniper Wolf.

XxX

(One Week Later – Volgograd, Russia)

Just what had happened in six months?

When Naruto arrived in the first urban locale in Russia he had immediately made his way to people that knew their way around guns. Small time arms dealers; because they had to have a higher profile supplier somewhere. He was trying to dig up some information on anyone that had outfitted the Gurlukovich Mercenaries in the past and had come across a name that had been given to him in the past by Johnny as the man that had handled.

And it took a few days after finding and strong-arming a gun runner that could actually reach high up enough in his hierarchy to get the information Naruto wanted, but it was still fast enough for his standards. Which led to Naruto sitting inside of an internet café wearing a dark red leather coat and his Dead Cell sunglasses over his eyes to go with his concealed physical features like his slicked back hair that was usually wild and spiky, and his whisker-marks that were covered with makeup.

Next to him was a rather jittery looking man with short dark hair and a goatee, "That's the one… over there. The one you're looking for." He said in Russian, quietly though as the both of them looked over at another blonde man Naruto's age, sitting there on his laptop with a coffee at his table, "The boss would like his money for the information."

Letting out a scoff, Naruto fished through his pockets and pulled out 300,000 rubles before handing it to the man under the table, "It's all there. I was expecting it to be more for information like this." He replied in the same language before then reaching into his pocket again and pulled out 15,000 more rubles for the grunt that was giving him his info from his higher-ups, "A little something for your trouble."

Greedily taking the money that Naruto so graciously gave him, the man seemed to calm right down, "It was cheap because if you were dumb enough to actually pick a fight against the Gurlukovich Mercenaries it would be your funeral in the end. Especially now that they're mafia affiliates." He pocketed the bills and stood up to leave, "Good luck. You're going to need it if you don't want to lose some limbs after this." With that he discreetly made his way out and onto the street.

Naruto just sat there patiently and waited Johnny out while pretending to read his own book. He was prepared to be there for hours before Johnny left since he knew that rather than training or working out he would prefer to veg around on the internet and goof off. Hey, it was obviously his downtime. He could do what he wanted. Who was Naruto to judge?

Eventually though, Johnny popped up from the terminal he was using for his stay and got up to leave. Naruto waited for thirty seconds after Johnny exited the place to follow him as he had a clone actively tailing him to keep tabs on his location.

Naruto had his clone dispel out of public sight when he himself caught sight of Johnny and took to tailing him on his own since that was what it would have to come down to if he wanted to talk to him. All of a sudden Johnny checked his watch and let out an alarmed shout before he took off running, surprising Naruto as he ran to keep up with him instead of overtaking him, 'What the hell spooked him? Is something wrong?'

Johnny cut into an alley and Naruto followed at a distance, prepared to follow Johnny around another corner, 'Maybe I'll just catch up to him, let him know it's me and ask him what's wrong. I might be able to hel-.' He didn't finish his thought as before he could round the next corner to continue after Johnny an arm stuck out from behind the wall and hit him in the throat, knocking him to the ground where he could hear Johnny cowering while his own head was ringing.

Looking up, Naruto saw Meryl, holding Johnny against the wall with one hand, her other arm outstretched from being the one that clotheslined Naruto to the ground, "I-I'm sorry I'm late Meryl! I just got caught up at the internet café and I lost track of time and-!"

He stopped when he saw Meryl's outstretched hand point down at the disguised Naruto. The sharp blue eyes of the fiery red-haired female soldier panned down to Naruto with a glare, "Who are you, and why are you following dumbass here?" Ignoring Johnny's pathetic sounding 'Hey…', Meryl seemed to be waiting on an answer from the grounded mystery blonde, "Hurry up and answer me already."

"Man you got stronger." Naruto said, popping his contacts out to reveal his blue eyes to Meryl, sparkling in mirth, "I felt like a ran into a steel pipe just now." He sat up from his place on the ground and shook his head to get the cobwebs out, "Nice to see you two again Meryl… Johnny-boy."

"Boss!" Johnny said as Meryl let him go out of sheer shock and surprise from seeing Naruto there.

Meryl stood, mouth agape for a moment before shaking her surprise off and finally choosing to speak, "You can't be here. Not right now. No, no, no. This is not good. Why did you come here _now_?"

Not knowing if he should have been offended by Meryl's lack of excitement at seeing him in person for the first time in years, Naruto frowned and jumped up to his feet, "Sure, I'll just skip back across the Bering and go back into hiding again." He said sarcastically before snapping at her, "What the fuck do you mean why'd I come here now? Why do you think? Oof!" Somehow during that entire sequence, Johnny grabbed both of his arms and Meryl buried her fist into his stomach one good time, "What was that for?"

"Thank you Johnny." Meryl said with a smile at how seamlessly he seemed to know what he wanted, "Do you want to hit him once too?"

"You both only get one freebie and you just wasted it." Naruto said, still holding his stomach from the punch he had taken. He had sort of expected someone to want to hit him, though he figured Olga would have done it first when he saw her, "Why is now not a good time? Between the getting framed and being pronounced dead, the covering my tracks, and the trying to figure out just what hit me I haven't had much time to come look for you guys."

Both Meryl and Johnny shared a look before Johnny walked over to a pile of crates to sit down, "Boss… we couldn't reach you. But something's happened."

"Did you know that Olga was pregnant?" Meryl asked Naruto as she leaned against the brick wall of the alley they were talking in. Naruto gave her a nod and turned stone-faced, deducing that whatever the problem was revolved around that, "She had the baby, and that's not the problem. The problem is that the baby was taken." She saw Naruto grit his teeth angrily upon hearing this news.

Who was stupid enough to take the child of the leader of a unit of mercenaries? It was probably someone that Olga would have killed for free otherwise, but now she had infinite motivation to go after them, and he'd be helping now, "Who did it? Or do you guys not know that yet?" He growled out lowly.

"Well we know, but we don't know." Johnny said with a nervous laugh, getting Naruto to glare at him and unnerve him somewhat, "You should know what I'm talking about shouldn't you Boss? They're the same jerks that blackmailed you."

"What!"

That outburst was more or less expected. In fact, Meryl had anticipated him to try and punch something after hearing that. Did that mean that the reckless one that had walked her out of Shadow Moses was starting to get his head together? One could only assume, "Yeah." Meryl said, "Last month. When Olga went into labor she went to a hospital that would be safe from the enemies we'd been making as a part of the Russian Mafia. But the branch we were working with had gotten hooked into by the Patriots… and they operated the hospital that she wound up going to. They probably walked right out the front door with Olga's child."

Now this did end up with Naruto punching a brick wall hard enough to break some of it, "How the fuck do they keep doing this shit to people? I'm tired of this! And I can't-!" He didn't even know what to say, he was red-faced and flustered by his own anger, "I…" He leaned against a wall and sank to sit down on the ground with his head in his hands, "Where is she? Where is Olga now? I have to see her."

A shift in the atmosphere could be felt and Naruto noticed Meryl sit next to him on the wall, "You don't want to do that. She's off training anyway."

"Don't tell me what I don't want to do Meryl… because you don't know what I'm up for." Naruto said, but there was no malice in his tone, just fatigue. He was so tired of all of this, "Why is she training? She shouldn't be doing anything right now." The way she was both physically and emotionally, Olga shouldn't have been doing anything combat related anytime soon.

"She's training because she has two missions." Johnny said, not balking once Meryl turned a glare towards him the way he usually would. Instead of shutting his mouth he glared right back at her heatedly, "He has to know Meryl." Johnny insisted, "It's not right to just let it happen. If we can't stop it then at least he can know about it first. He saved my ass, was a friend to me before that, and got me this job to begin with. He's always going to be the Boss." He had to list the reasons just to tell Naruto whatever he was going to say that Meryl wasn't 100% about.

Well didn't that sound ominous?

"Know about what?" Naruto asked, looking up from the ground to turn and lock eyes with Meryl, who couldn't meet his gaze after hearing his question, "Hey!" He barked authoritatively, getting her to look back towards him with a start, "What do I need to know?" He then looked over at Johnny whose momentary bout of bravado seemed to be gone.

It was clear that he wasn't going to leave until he heard what he wanted to know, and Johnny was right; he did need to know what they did. It wasn't fair to keep something so important from him, "Well, Olga has two possible missions and she can't turn doing one or the other down or else they'll kill her baby. There's one that she doesn't know the specifics about yet. But apparently she can keep herself from having to do that one altogether by pulling something off first. All she has to do is find and kill someone."

Well didn't that sound ominous?

…Again.

"Who?" Naruto asked, despite the voice in the back of his head screaming at him to ignore his own knowledge of the obvious answer at hand and not ask the corresponding question. If it was that straightforward there had to be a catch as to why she didn't just go ahead and do that one since it was the simpler option. In his heart he already knew who the target was.

"You."

…Damn it.

* * *

><p><span>Omake: Heartbreak Kid <span>

Following the mission in Cuba, the Philanthropy quartet took a week to get themselves up to the U.S./Canadian border safehouse, but once there things slowed down considerably. Thus was the life of special ops; a lot of action packed into small timeframes and mind-numbing amounts of dead space in between.

And to break the boredom there wasn't much to do.

"145, 146, 147." Catherine was dully counting while sitting cross-legged and calmly on Naruto's back while he was doing pushups, "148, 149, 150. Okay that's enough from you, I'm done." She said, unceremoniously standing up from her previous place, "Aniki this is boring as hell."

Naruto stopped exercising and looked up at his little sister with a dry expression on his face, "I know. That's why I'm doing pushups. Because there isn't anything else to do. I can't go outside and cut up the trees with the HF Blade, and Snake's not around to fight for fun. I can't go outside and kick your cute little ass around for a few minutes… that'd be too easy."

A frown adorned Catherine's face before a grin broke out, "Well you can always try some VR Training if you want. It's realistic."

"If I get shot will I die or get hurt?"

"No."

"If I crash whatever vehicle I'm supposed to be training in will I blow it all up in flames?"

"No."

"Then I don't want to do it."

Puffing her cheeks out indignantly, Catherine turned and went to the backroom, "Fine, I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up later if I'm not up by sundown."

This left Naruto and Otacon alone in the main room. Naruto, still sitting on the floor due to not having the motivation to stand, looked over at the bespectacled scientist as he continued to work on his computer. How the man could sit there day in and day out doing the same monotonous thing Naruto didn't know. Dedication he guessed.

"Hey Naruto."

The younger blonde perked up when he heard his name come from Otacon. He was turned around in his chair to face Naruto, thus the soldier tilted his head while wondering what he wanted, "Yeah? What's up? You need one of us to run into town for something?"

"No it's nothing like that." Otacon said before letting out a sigh, wondering how he was going to go about having this conversation, "Well it's just… Naruto you seem like the kind of guy that knows how to get women."

"What?" Naruto said with a raised eyebrow. He would have started laughing uproariously, but for the sake of being polite decided to hear out his reasoning, "What in Kami's name makes you think that? And why aren't you asking Snake. He's like fourteen years older than me."

"Does Snake strike you as the kind of guy that's knowledgeable on women? And for you? Well there's Meryl, Wolf, and apparently even Catherine likes you." Otacon tried to explain, "There's got to be a reason for it, so come on and let a guy in on your secret." He prodded before he had to duck a shoe being chucked at him, "Hey! What's the big idea, it was just a question!"

"A dumbass question." Naruto said with a twitching eye at Otacon's insinuation, "First of all I never did anything with Meryl. Ever. I'm not her type… I think she's into guys that are a little more evenly balanced than me. Then there's Kitty. The brother complex she has is not particularly returned by me, even though it's kind of cool. And Wolf-." He then stopped in his tracks, "Wait, how'd you know I've been with Wolf?" He never told him that, he never told anyone that.

"It was just an assumption like the rest." Otacon said, adjusting the glasses on his face, "I thought you'd dated everyone I named at some point or another and since you took Meryl and Wolf away from Shadow Moses I figured you'd had a relationship with them at one time."

Otacon thought Naruto was a player? What kind of sick joke was that? Yeah, he was a ladies' man with no ladies around whatsoever. Seriously, he wanted to know what he had done in front of Otacon to ever convince him that he was some kind of smooth operator.

"Date? Relationship?" Naruto said as if they were foreign words to him in a language he couldn't speak, "When the hell would I have time to date or have an actual girlfriend in between all of the secrets and getting shot at?"

"Then what do you mean by you saying you've been with Wolf? What else could you mean?"

Silence settled between the two and over the entire safehouse in general until Naruto slowly stood up, "I think I've said too much." And with that he walked outside into the wilderness and shut the door behind him before strolling out further away from the building. Hey, Otacon was a smart guy, which meant it was only a matter of time before he pieced the phrasing together and-.

"Noooo!"

Naruto winced when he heard Otacon scream from inside the house and hurriedly walked away faster until he saw Snake leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette, "Hey kid. What's he going on about in there?"

Both Naruto and Snake listened in as they could hear sobbing from inside the house, obviously from one Hal 'Otacon' Emmerich… since they had both heard him cry before and knew what it sounded like.

"I might have told him by accident that I did it with Sniper Wolf."

"That's the most hilarious thing I've heard in months." Snake said with a smirk on his face, even letting out a few chuckles before the sounds of Otacon's apparent overdramatic heartbreak got him to roll his eyes, "Yeah, I'm not going in there until someone runs damage control." He was not getting cried on, and he was not going to sit there and hear him complain about how Naruto 'took his love away', no matter how comical it would be for the first five minutes, "Let Catherine do the whole emotional-understanding thing."

That sounded like a sensible plan. Let the chick handle the emotion stuff. And then Naruto thought about just what that would entail; Otacon telling Catherine the exact woman that Naruto slept with. And then he would have to deal with that shit from Catherine for the next six months.

With an ultimatum like that, Naruto turned and started going back to the house, something that surprised Snake, "What are you doing? You're really going back there?"

"Yeah… maybe if I let him beat me up little bit he'll get over it."

Letting the younger fighter leave, Snake just shook his head and went back to smoking. It took a few moments before snake heard crashes from the direction of the house.

*CRASH*

"Did you just hit me with a chair? That actually hurt!"

* * *

><p><strong>And that's chapter for what it's worth.<strong>

**Now for those having trouble grasping the mental faculties of the protagonist thus far in the story it goes as thus: **

**Naruto's general mindset and view on things is pretty easy to discern. He has **_**three-fourths**_** of the base values that form the crux of his character in Shippuuden. He has the views that Kakashi and Haku gave him early in his career about how protecting those close to you makes you strong and about how important comrades are, he has an understanding and an empathy of sorts with those that have experienced hardships of various natures even though he has not personally felt the loss that many others later in the series will have experienced, and he has a strong desire to ensure that those close to him do not lose themselves to the feeling of needing vengeance the way that Sasuke did which resulted in him ending up in this world in the first place, this will be very important fairly soon.**

**That's where it ends though. He does not have the noble and all-encompassing desire for peace that Jiraiya bestowed upon him because they never shared those times where he shared his beliefs with the boy, and with his own experience in constant states of combat throughout his teenage years he learned to not see battle as just a way to protect others as that is more of a worst-case scenario. He found a way to derive some pleasure from the endeavor altogether, as has been expressed with the joy he seems to get from certain fights and in the past when he expressed excitement at fighting Olga once again.**

**So what we are left with is a Naruto with the bulk of his base of good-natured beliefs who is completely unafraid to act on his own desires for conflict and holds no aspiration for things to settle down since he feels comfortable while in the fray. This is also due to the more traumatic events such as his capture and the harvest of his genes from Dr. Clark that planted a seed of imbalance in his head.**

**He understands completely that he isn't right at all since he has previously questioned how on earth he would fit in with any semblance of normality in proper society and he also wishes that others like Catherine remain untouched by any of the things that make him, him. This mindset causes him to believe that he has to take things on for himself since someone has to fight the battles such as the thing against the Patriots… so why not someone that likes fighting in the first place?**

***Ahem* But then again, who cares? It's all a means of entertainment in the end and I hope I'm at least providing a bit of that since I'm entertaining myself trying to write this shit.**

**Later. Kenchi out.**


	22. It's a LoveHate Thing

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I _can_ make the sound that Ocelot makes in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater though. It's hilarious because if you do it right it's loud and scares the hell out of people at the right time. Better than birdcalls for sure… because I still can't whistle.

**Chapter 22: It's a Love/Hate Thing**

* * *

><p>(February 2008 – Volgograd, Russia – Naruto: Age 21)<p>

After the startling little revelation that an option to get her daughter back was to find Naruto and kill him, Naruto himself almost went catatonic at having to deal with something similar happening to him again; a close friend killing him, but managed to keep from doing such because of a rather authoritative slap from Meryl that snapped him out of it.

From there she and Johnny had taken Naruto to a safe place to talk more securely; the top of an under construction skyscraper that wasn't being worked on at the moment due to it being Sunday. It was actually a good thing that it was so cloudy… because if it was sunny on a day when Naruto had learned of such a thing he'd have sworn it was just the world laughing at him.

"Kill me?" Naruto said, pacing around while Johnny sat nearby on a pile of plywood and Meryl stood in front of Naruto as he puttered back and forth, seemingly getting annoyed as he had been walking around manically and muttering 'kill me' to himself questioningly for the last ten minutes, "Kill _me_?"

Apparently this was what one could expect when Naruto put down three coffees waiting for Johnny to get up and leave the internet café. Good to know for future reference if any of them lived long enough to take advantage of the information to not give Naruto caffeine ever under any circumstances.

"Yes! Kill _you_!" Meryl finally exclaimed, alarming Naruto at the volume of the pretty redhead's voice, "For the love of God stop pacing and repeating yourself like a broken record, you're giving me a monster headache here!"

Naruto stopped and turned to get in Meryl's face as the two just seemed to stare each other down until Naruto got close enough to push his forehead against Meryl's, "Well sorry for getting upset about my best friend possibly trying to kill me. I thought we had gotten past that a long time ago. Kami, this sucks!"

"Aww…" Johnny said in a rather dejected tone of voice, "Miss Olga's your best friend? Well where am I?"

The conversation ground to a halt and Naruto actually started counting out on his fingers as if there was a real hierarchy on the matter, "Uh, Olga's number one. Meryl's number three. You're number five… out of five. Wolf's not on the list for just reference's sake."

"Why?" Meryl asked, wondering who the hell number two and four would be in that case while Johnny was whining about how he was at the bottom of the totem pole, "You're saying Sniper Wolf isn't your friend?"

"No." Naruto said in an idiot voice to pick with Meryl, "I'm saying that friends with benefits and family members don't count when it comes to my list. You can't impartially rank a female friend if you've seen what that friend looks like naked. It's just unfair to everyone else." He then pointed directly at Meryl, "You don't count because I didn't see you naked, I only saw your back that one time and turned away so you wouldn't shoot me."

"-Because you're not that stupid."

"Exactly."

"Why are we talking about this?"

"Because I really don't _want_ to talk about how Olga's probably looking for me to kill me, but I guess we don't have a choice do we?"

And that brought the little bit of frivolity between the young soldiers right back down again with the sobering reality of that situation. Johnny, ever the eternal optimist though, tried to keep things somewhat positive, "Hey, we don't really know for sure that Miss Olga would kill you."

"It's either kill Naruto or take a mystery mission." Meryl interjected, shaking her head, "Neither of those things sound good or easy, but if you had to choose which one would you take?" An unnamed mission that would probably be the most difficult thing imaginable, or fight against the most maddening enemy with more tricks than the world's best magician on his best day. That wasn't even adding in the personal things.

"I can't see how Miss Olga could look Boss in his eye and pull the trigger."

It was ridiculous to Meryl how little Johnny knew about women after having to deal with both herself and Sniper Wolf in one way or another for three years, "If it's for her child she won't be rational about it because there's no rationality when it comes to that." And then there was the part where she was currently off training. Why would she need to train if she would just be given a mission that she could assign to one of her mercenaries?

Come to think of it, why would she go on a training trip to prepare to kill Naruto either? Did she really think that she would get the chance to fight him herself? If it was put to a vote, the vast, vast majority of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries would probably jump at the chance to put a bullet into Naruto's head just because. She'd probably never even have to look at him before he was killed somehow.

Naruto leaned against an upright steel support beam of the building and let out a sigh, "Where is Wolf? I need another perspective on this whole thing."

A voice then came from the other side of the steel beam in its quite common middle eastern brogue, "Oh… I'm never too far away from where I should be little probie." She said from the exact opposite side of the beam, clearly out of sight and with a smirk adorning her features, "By the way. I could swear that my ears were burning just before I got here. You weren't talking about me while I wasn't present were you?"

"Is the right answer to that question no?" Naruto asked before Wolf walked from her place of concealment and he got a good look at her. Still with the long blonde hair, still absurdly beautiful, and still wearing the same suit that he had seen her in while in FOXHOUND, except this one had a more tundra type feel to it in the coloring, "Hi Wolf." With that he stepped out and hugged her before letting go, "It's been a while."

"Yes it has." Wolf pulled back from Naruto looked him over, stopping at the bags underneath his eyes. She frowned much in the same matter that he did when he realized that they were what she was looking at, "My God, you look terrible. Have you been getting any sleep at all?" She would even accept the answer of the few hours a week he got while in FOXHOUND.

"Not really." Less than usual actually, but that was not important at all at the moment. It wasn't about him, and he didn't care about his own well-being at the moment… sort of, "What the hell is going on around here?"

At that point Meryl chimed in to level the situation with Wolf, "He already knows everything about what's going on. Even the part about killing him."

Nodding that she didn't have to repeat what everyone there already knew, Wolf looked back at her former underling and flicked him on the forehead so that she had his undivided attention, "Right. You're going to run. You're going to run far, far away and you are going to keep your head down."

"What?" Naruto said incredulously, "Fuck that. Running's all I've been doing for six months. I want to help." In the middle of his tirade's beginning, Wolf reached into one of his concealed places and pulled out Naruto's gun, cocking it before putting it into his hand and pointing it at his stomach, "What are you doing?"

Wolf's eyes held no fondness in them the way they usually did as she answered, "If you want to help then you can pull that trigger and we can drag your body back to base. If you don't want to do that then you will do what I tell you. There isn't a move to make here Naruto. Do you have even the slightest inkling of where they have Olga's daughter. The enemy is not clear. You cannot just take yourself to their front doorstep and blow them to smithereens."

"That's why I'm in the mess I'm in too!" Naruto snapped, his eyes turning red for a moment before he swallowed the rage and choked it back down, "I know that Wolf! I've been living like a damn ghost for the last six months and before that I was a hired killer for the same people that used me and threw me away like a shaving cartridge." He walked away from the group of them before he did something wrong and instead kicked a metal beam that held the skyscraper up with a resounding clang, "These people know who we are and I don't know a damn thing about them except for dead end leads from half a century ago. I don't know how I've gotten away with keeping you guys out of their scope for this long after Shadow Moses."

"But you're free now." Johnny said sounding rather underwhelmed by the way Naruto was receiving not having to take the orders of The Patriots any longer, "Isn't that everything you were working for in the first place?"

Naruto shook his head and looked up at the grey sky, "Olga's not. And neither is anyone else. Being free is being able to do what you want. Slipping through borders like a rat, hiding from your own friends, not being able to talk to anyone or do anything in the daylight… that's not freedom. We're like dogs with extra-long choke chains." Naruto looked down at the gun in his hand intently, "Wolf you said that you liked something about me, that it was why you couldn't kill me at Shadow Moses."

"Because there was nothing that could make you compromise your morals." Wolf replied, dredging up the memories of the last time she had lost any kind of battle, "You always did what you felt was the right thing to do. And that bleeding heart of yours…"

A faint smile came to Naruto's face as he nodded, "I'm going to find a way. I promise. I don't know how it'll get done, but I'll make it so that you guys don't have to keep going on like this. I'll get Olga's baby back somehow… I'll do it."

"How?"

Naruto stopped walking around and just stared at the gun in his hand with a serious and thoughtful look on his face before turning the safety back on and placing it in its necessary concealed location, "…Any way I have to." He let out a sigh and looked towards the other, "I might be needing help again soon. Just… keep me posted on what's going on. And tell-."

"We're not telling Olga that you were here." Meryl said, suddenly cutting Naruto off from what she knew he was going to say, "I know what you want her to know for, and it's a bad idea not just for us but especially for you. She knows you didn't kill her father, but Ocelot has said as much and he has the men on his side in that regard. They wanted your blood beforehand and this just made it ten times worse. She can't exactly bring up that you were on that tanker in the first place because of her could she?"

"So she doesn't say anything at all." Johnny continued, "The others all think it's because she's so angry she goes silent whenever you come up, but Wolf says that it was starting to get to her." Johnny shrugged in confusion when Naruto gave him a look to elaborate, "I'm not the guy to ask about it Boss."

With that, Naruto turned towards Wolf and she explained, "Everything that's happened is getting to be too much. I can see it, she's starting to believe that you actually did eliminate her father for whatever reason. She wasn't there to see it. No one was. Ocelot was the only one that knows of what went on down there."

"Tell her I didn't do it!" Naruto stressed, "Ocelot did it when he took Metal Gear RAY! Sergei threw the Marine at him and Ocelot shot him when he shot through the other guy!"

"Calm down." Wolf said, putting a hand on his cheek to keep him from getting fired up any further, "You aren't telling anyone anything that we didn't already assume in the first place. But we don't know where Ocelot hid RAY so we can't just take it. Olga wants to kill him. It takes everything she has to keep from pulling a weapon on him whenever he shows himself, which is fewer and far between these days. If she did that then she would lose the support of her father's men."

Ocelot was the last of the old guard of Russian soldiers and they had looked up to him as Sergei Gurlukovich's closest confidant and a legend. Olga was younger than the vast majority of the soldiers in the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, and while they all loved her as she had been with them for her entire life, she was still seen as too young to lead. Too prone to irrational decisions. As much as she wished to simply off Ocelot out of mere principle, she could not do so and keep their full loyalty.

The life of a leader was unfairly impersonal if she couldn't even handle her own personal affairs. Holding the unit together was more important than her issue with Ocelot and killing him would splinter it. They had already survived what could have been a major clusterfuck at Shadow Moses out of sheer luck and timing, as if they had directly gotten involved they would have been destroyed.

…That had to have been how The Patriots learned of the unit in the first place.

"You have my frequency." Naruto said lowly as he popped his green contacts back in to disguise his eyes and started reapplying his makeup to disguise his whisker marks again, "Don't use it on anything that anyone can trace. I've got to get back."

Nodding, Johnny tapped his head as he had committed Naruto's new frequency to memory, "What are you going to go do now Boss? You've only been here for a week or something right? What's next?"

"Just… take care of Olga and yourselves."

"You never answered him." Meryl said, glaring at Naruto's back. He was being dodgy. It had to have been a blow to hear about Olga and her baby, but something felt completely off about how he was just leaving it at this. She and Johnny had been expecting to have to at some point physically intervene to keep him from trying to see Olga directly, "What are you going to do next?"

Naruto's eyes strayed down to where he hid his gun before looking over the edge of the skyscraper, "I told you that already. I'm going to go do whatever I have to do. See you guys soon." He said as he started walking away.

"Soon?" Meryl said before rolling her eyes, "Yeah, sure. Like 'three years' soon I'll bet."

The three of them looked at Naruto as he descended the stairs on his way out of the skyscraper, with Wolf's eyes not leaving his frame for one moment, "I don't like the way he said that. The way he spoke was foreboding."

"What do you mean?" Johnny said, "All he said was that he was going to see us soon."

"Not that." Wolf said with a frown at Johnny for not picking up on Naruto's tone, "When he said he was going to do whatever he had to do. He sounded like someone that was well aware of their options. It sounded very foreboding." An uneasy, sinking feeling was left in her stomach just from that meeting.

"Come on Wolf." Meryl said with a reassuring smile, "This is Naruto here. He just acts crazy, he's not really into putting himself into trouble. Besides, what can he do when he doesn't even know where Olga's baby is? There isn't even really anything he can do at this point about it."

"There is one thing he can do… and I just hope he ignores that solution altogether."

XxX

(Late February 2008 – Washington State/Canadian Border)

For what seemed like the only thing of substance he did these days, Otacon sat in front of his computer, punching away and digging through any set of classified files he could get himself into before he found something that got his face to perk up, "Ha! Finally! Something at last!"

"What? I'm up!" Catherine said from her own position sleeping nearby on a couch in front of her own laptop. She looked around the dark main room of the cabin that only had the light of Otacon's computer lighting it. She frowned and yawned as she deactivated her laptop's sleep mode and looked at the time, "For the love of… don't you people ever sleep?" She asked as she rubbed her eyes.

"We grab some when we can."

The sudden gruff voice got Catherine to jump up with a jolt of fright in her chair, "Snake?" She looked towards the corner of the dark room by the open window only to see part of Snake's silhouette in the moonlight and the burning end of a lit cigarette, "You scared the hell out of me. You guys are seriously twisted. I can see why Aniki likes you both so much."

Snake let out a grunt and smirked in the dark before breathing his smoke outside, "Yeah, you could put it that way I guess. You get used to it after a while. He did." He said, gesturing towards Otacon who was still clicking away on files, "Anyway, what did you find that was important enough to wake up Miller-brat?" Catherine stuck out her tongue at Snake but paid attention to Otacon as well.

"I've picked up a trail that we can use." Otacon began to explain as the others got up to walk over to his computer, "Two years ago Naruto saw Otacon with George Sears in France, but he couldn't get to either one before they got away. So I placed him into the proxy engine of my computer just in case. Untitled images, any documents of marked importance of George Sears. It was mostly just his political crap from his 2000 and 2004 election, but I did find something here."

Clicking on an image to blow it up for better examination purposes, it was shown to be an old photo of a Liberian rebellion unit moving through a town in the early 1990s. It was the standard fare of a rebel militia, nothing out of the ordinary, even with the absurdly young age of many of the soldiers caught on film.

Catherine shook her head at the sight and thought back to watching Naruto train with so many deadly weapons when he was just thirteen. The look in their eyes haunted her just like his when she saw him after his time in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Snake was playing a little game as simply showing them that picture did nothing and was useless. The game was 'which of these things does not belong' and eventually Snake's eyes locked onto a figure in the corner that was somewhat blurry but seemed slightly out of place, "Otacon can you-?"

"Zoom in on that image in the corner and focus?" Otacon said with a grin, already prepared to do just that, "On it." The image focused up and Snake's jaw dropped with his cigarette falling out of his mouth to the floor, "That looks just like-."

"-George Sears." Snake finished in his partner's place.

Catherine got closer to the screen and squinted to get a better look. When Otacon realized that she was trying to make the connection, he pulled up an image of Sears from his first presidential campaign for the 2000 election year and she compared them against each other before whistling, "Wow… the Liberian Civil War ended in 96. Four years and he looked like that afterwards? Father Time sure took a bat to his face."

While Sears' hair had already grayed by 2000, in the earlier picture there were only slight tints of grey to go with brown hair. As a matter of fact he kind of bore a bit of a resemblance to someone, but Catherine couldn't put her finger on that either.

"Why was Sears in Africa?" Snake asked aloud, "His background never held any history of military service. Not even in the U.N." Yet there he was with gun in hand, traveling with the rebels, "As a matter of fact, he might be the most secretive president ever. But he's a Patriot puppet president like James Johnson… so there's that too."

"Sears ran away from the country after the Shadow Moses fallout broke." Otacon said, focusing back on the Liberian Civil War picture, "And Naruto said he saw him with Ocelot on a small chartered jet. That was enough to get them some serious distance. Where would he go from that point?" He asked rhetorically aloud.

Looking between the two men, Catherine put a deadpan look on her face wondering why they didn't just say it and be done with it, "You're going to go to Africa aren't you? Liberia?"

"No, of course not." Snake said, much to Catherine's surprise. She had fully expected them to be already finding the first viable means to getting across the Atlantic to the other continent, "…We'll never find anything in Liberia, that's no place to hide from anyone these days. We're going to Sierra Leone." He looked at the 19 year old girl strangely when she palmed her forehead audibly, "What's the matter?"

Moving her hand from her forehead to reveal a red mark, Catherine sighed and shook her head, "Nothing… Do you want me to set a message for Aniki and tell him or are we waiting for him to get back first?"

"We're waiting." Snake said, moving his way back towards the window to get another cigarette and continue to smoke idly, "If we're actually going far away enough out of the country that we need to get across the ocean then we might need his ninja tricks to pull it off if we can't bribe our way onto a freighter."

"How's a ninja trick going to get us on a freighter to Sierra Leone?" Catherine asked, marveling as she watched Otacon begin planning out a route to the east coast of North America like clockwork, "Wait, how are we going to bribe anyone to get to Sierra Leone in the first place? You and Aniki are dead terrorists. Huh, that _does_ sound like the name of a good band…"

Addressing Catherine, Otacon turned around in his chair and adjusted his glasses smartly on his face, "Actually, it's probably going to be you and I that do the bribing and put in the face time. Naruto and Snake are going to be our no-questions-asked luggage. Literally… they're probably going to be luggage."

A raised eyebrow met him from Catherine before she turned to Snake who just nodded with a displeased look on his face, like he accepted that he was going to be stuck in a cramped space for quite a long length of time in order to get to Sierra Leone, "And you're okay with that? You guys really are totally weird."

XxX

(Over One Month Later – March 2008 – Small Bay Town in Sierra Leone – Naruto: Age 21)

"Never again." Catherine said full of intent and malice as a rented pickup truck was loaded with the equipment that she and Otacon had brought with them onto the freighter across the ocean, "That was the absolute most miserable 34 days of my entire life." She finished tying the full truck bed down and pointed at Otacon who was in the driver's seat, "You can go back with them if you want to, I'm flying back to North America."

"No you're not Kitty." Catherine heard from one of the things that she had just finished making sure was up in the truck, "You're taking a freighter back too just like everybody else. Now can we get a move on here? I haven't stretched my legs in three days. And 'Arthritis Snake' is probably stuck in that stupid box he put himself in by now."

"Shut up brat." Snake's muffled voice said, coming from a cardboard box that had been loaded also, "But he's kind of right too. Hurry up and get us somewhere safe already."

Not needing to be told again by two cranky soldiers that hadn't seen proper daylight in who knew how long, Catherine climbed into the passenger's seat of the truck next to Otacon who had the rental truck fired up and ready to go, "There's got to be an easier way to do this stuff. It's the 21st century."

"Not without the connections." Otacon said, shifting gears with the truck as they rolled through the bumpy street, "Connections that we don't have at the moment. We bribed them not to check our stuff, but if we had tried to get Naruto and Snake onboard without hiding them they would have made trouble."

BUMP!

"Ow!" They heard very faintly from outside in the back, "Drive better!"

Catherine rolled her eyes at her loudmouth big brother and looked lazily out the window before smirking, "…Hit that pothole." Otacon smirked in return and did just that with another resounding jumble of the things in the back.

"Ow!"

"Damn it Otacon!"

XxX

(Sometime Later)

Finally freed from their respective hiding place, Naruto and Snake joined Otacon and Catherine in checking into a hotel room under an assumed name and paying cash. Here the cards were all lain out for why they were there in the first place.

"Okay." Otacon said, laying down a printed copy of the picture of George Sears in the Liberian Civil War. This was never brought up, probably due to tampering with his history, and it was the only thing they had as to finding the man himself. Finding him would be a major boon, "This is the Small Boy Unit from the Liberian Civil War. Now the first one may have ended 12 years ago, but things like this never truly go away."

"And this is another one of those things." Catherine continued, picking up where Otacon left off, "After the Second Liberian Civil War ended a few years ago there wasn't really anything left for them in Liberia. No more fighting left to do, so they left to a place where they could be useful again. Fighting is all they knew how to do." Her eyes went towards Naruto momentarily before getting back to the point, "So they stuck together and became the enforcers for a diamond mining operation."

Naruto seemed to be waiting for her to say more, either her or Otacon, but neither of them did, getting him to raise an eyebrow, "…And? That's it?" The blonde girl nodded and sat back in her chair as Naruto spoke again, "Alright… I guess that says enough. So how are we going to get in to find out if Sears is there?"

Otacon and Catherine looked at each other concernedly before Otacon turned to Naruto and Snake, "Well, from what we gleaned from around town, the place is a total fortress that keeps expanding outward to look for more minerals. It's about one hundred miles inland and everyone stays at least ten miles clear of it."

"Why?"

"Because the security happens to be insane sadists." Catherine said with a bit of malice in her voice, "Have you ever met a man that used to mine diamonds until he got his hands cut off for 'holding out' on them? Because I did today. It was just a paranoid accusation, but they went ahead and cut the poor man's hands off and dropped him outside of the camp for dead."

Snake could hear the utter disdain for the barbarous methods of the former members of the Small Boy Unit and had to remember that Catherine had never seen anything close to that in person before, "You could blame the PTSD, but I've heard quite a lot of things about how child soldiers were conditioned to fight. Any of them that actually grew up… if they didn't get serious counseling there's no way they could cope in the end with living the way that they did." He saw Catherine glaring at him and grunted before specifying, "I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying."

"They're notorious for the treatment of workers." Otacon explained, marking the spot on the map of the camp, "Sierra Leone's standing army hasn't made any moves on them due to the sheer amount of prisoners they keep. They'll kill anyone they wish for any reason at all. In the case of an emergency they'll gather all of the prisoners together and lock the camp down. Any problems and they won't hesitate to shoot innocents."

Naruto smacked his lips in the dry air of the room and nodded at the information, "Hmm. Yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and say that even if Sears doesn't wind up being there, I'm blowing that thing up anyway."

"We're not directly attacking the place kid." Remarked Snake before Naruto got ahead of himself, "Didn't you just hear. If you think you can get your ass in there without setting anything off then be my guest, but are you really going to put that many people at risk just like that?"

"Well how are we going to get in to check for Sears if you don't want to sneak in Mr. Hero?" Asked Naruto aloud with a look of skepticism on his face.

"We need a two-pronged attack." Snake explained to the others, "One of us will have to actually get inside at some point, but we need an inside man already there to soften things up and get things set beforehand. From the two sides of the coin we'll have everything we need to put the squeeze on this place and find out all we need in the process."

"Okay, sounds good but who's the insi-?" Naruto started to ask before he noticed that Snake calmly had his index finger touching his nose, "Are you seriously doing that right now? Is he-?" He then looked around and saw Otacon and Catherine doing the same, "Oh come on! You two were never going to be the ones to go in the first place! I've got to go?"

Snake smirked with his finger still touching his nose, "Why would they take me? I'm old and arthritic, remember? I'll just get my hands cut off or worse." Snake said, neglecting to mention that 36 was not that old for once the way he usually did in his arguments with Naruto, "You're all young and spry with those track star muscles. They'll pick you up in a heartbeat. And you're a blonde, blue-eyed American too?"

"So because you're an old ass man-." Naruto started snarkily, getting a growl out of Snake with the younger soldier not caring because he didn't particularly like what he was being told at all, "-And because I am awesome and young, I have to go do the stupidest thing that I've ever done in my entire life?" He asked, "What if they just try to fucking shoot me, or cut my hands off like other people?"

"Then you can fight back and kill them if it gets that far." Otacon said with a shrug, "They're not going to tie you up. Anything other than that though, and you've just got to take it until Snake gets you out." The glowering look from Naruto in return got him to laugh nervously, "You're a tough guy aren't you? You can take it for a few days. It's just a little mining. Keep your head down, be good, don't start trouble, and in a few days you can turn the place upside down."

And there lay the least desirable undercover mission Naruto had ever taken right before him.

A captive in an African diamond work camp.

"This is going to suck so bad."

"You can do it." Otacon said, patting Naruto on the shoulder.

"I wish you would fall off a cliff and Superman would catch you just in time to save you… just to let you fall from even higher." Naruto ground out, setting his head on the table he was sitting at in desperation, "That's how much I hate you right now. What kind of bullshit plan has me become a prisoner to a bunch of lunatic former child soldiers?"

"I don't like it either Aniki." Catherine said after sitting in silence to hear the entire scenario out from the others, "Just give it a few days. Three days. If you don't get anything in three days then we'll just go ahead with the rest of the plan we come up with and get you out. You have your Codec so I'll be able to talk to you anytime. You'll be by yourself, but we'll still be around."

The room was silent until Naruto finally spoke up again, "Okay. There's only one way I'm doing this. If you can't get me this then I'm not setting foot outside of this town in that direction." Everyone in the room nodded in grave consent, "Oh lighten up. This'll be easy."

XxX

(10 km West of the Mining Camp)

Yeah, it was a terrible idea, but at this point Naruto couldn't care less judging by the dozens of empties sitting on the floor of the truck they had rented out.

His one condition for going on this mission: permission to get ridiculously, absurdly, irresponsibly drunk before and during his trip into enemy territory. He was 21 and had never gotten to do such before. And he was asking them to let him do so because he needed far more than any normal person would need due to his resistance to foreign substances.

The two hour trip on the dirt road all the way out there had been a test in drunken focus and hand-eye coordination. And when he made clones in that state they were drunk too. That was two hours of fun he'd never forget.

And with the obnoxiously loud rock music blasting over the stereo he was wondering why exactly no one had stopped him yet. Oh, he was thinking semi-straight again. He must have been sobering up once more. Just in time too. He didn't exactly want to face off with bloodthirsty killers and try to act in front of them inebriated. He'd probably do something stupid and kill one of them when they got to him.

It was fun while it lasted though.

That was when he saw something of a rudimentary blockade of trucks cutting off the dirt road and Naruto sighed to himself before making a quick call on his Codec, "Hello."

"_Aniki I swear to God if you're drunk dialing me again I'm going to-."_

"-I'm about to get my ass beaten by crazy militia and captured for slave labor. Are you sure that's the last thing you want to leave me with?"

"_Oh! Sorry, good luck. Be tough in there okay?"_

"Bye Kitty. And tell Otacon I'm going to kick him in the balls when this is over." With that, he ended the transmission and opened a bottle of whiskey in the car, putting on his best drunk face as he drew to a stop with around seven AK-47s pointed at him by those watching the blockade, "Hey! What's with this? You're blocking the road!" He yelled drunkenly as he took a swig and savored it. Maybe it would numb what was about to happen as his truck was surrounded?

CRACK!

No, it didn't numb getting hit above the eye with the butt of a rifle through an open window. He was too sober for that.

The door was opened and Naruto was yanked out of the truck by one of the soldiers, dropped into the dirt road with blood pouring from the wound above his eye, 'Okay. That guy's getting it when I start tearing that base up.' He got up onto his hands and knees and took a shot to the back of his head from another AK-47 that knocked him back down, 'Grr… I'm going to shove that gun up your ass and hold the trigger down until I empty the clip.'

After taking enough of a beating to where they figured he was softened up enough, they dragged him to his feet and threw him against the blockade trucks before pointing their guns at him, "Get in the back or die in the road like a dog! Your choice American!"

Naruto feigned a look of fear and nodded as quickly as possible before climbing into the truckbed, with another of the soldiers getting in with him and keeping a gun trained on him while the others drove off, "What's happening?" He asked, intentionally sounding as fearful as he could only to get hit in the face with the gun again instead of getting an explanation.

Ugh, he had never been captured by anyone before, either intentionally or otherwise. Clearly these were the kinds of people that wanted prisoners to shut the hell up since talking made them uneasy... and they were the ones with the guns.

Still, getting hit with that damn AK-47 was getting very, very annoying, and he couldn't even make eye contact to glare at them. He swore that if he did it at that moment the guy would try to shoot him just off of the sheer killing intent he'd be radiating, 'Oh… I am going to savor the payoff to this.' Naruto thought to himself. He really hoped he'd find what he was doing this for in a hurry. His keeping of his own temper would probably more or less depend on it.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter complete. This is the shortest chapter I've ever posted for this story, but if I'd have kept going it would have made it far too long in the end before I'd reached another point that I would have felt comfortable stopping at. So take it as you will.<strong>

**I've not got much to say today, so I will simply bid you all a fond farewell and hope that until we meet again the best things in life happen for ya, and know that Kenchi loves ya!**

**Platonically of course.**

**Later. Kenchi out.**


	23. Greetings Mr President

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. And all of the attempted free running while carrying guns on my person and wearing an eyepatch and smoking cigars/cigarettes will not change this fact.

Also please note that the use of Parkour while smoking is not recommended for multiple reasons.

**Chapter 23: Greetings Mr. President**

* * *

><p>The last thing that Catherine heard from her Codec feed with Naruto was her older brother getting smashed with the butt of a rifle, as distinct of a noise as it was. Not really the most reassuring thing one could hear when the current plan of action was for him to be the inside man in a diamond work camp full of former child soldiers and hair-trigger overseers.<p>

"Snake." Catherine as she sat by her laptop in the hotel room she, Otacon, Naruto, and Snake had been sharing for their stay before the operation began, "If Naruto dies or loses a limb during this mission, I might not be a soldier or a killer but I swear to God I'm going to-."

"Not being killers never stopped any women from screwing me over before." Snake said to himself, sitting by the window but out of sight of anyone from outside that could see him as he smoked a cigarette, "So I'm not doubting that you would. You're Master Miller's daughter after all, I'm sure you know a few nasty tricks."

Wow, Snake seriously didn't know how to comfort distressed young women. From Catherine's glare on his form it was clear that what he had said was not reassuring in the least which was what she wanted, "Everything will be just fine." Otacon told her, taking it upon himself to be the one to keep her calm about Naruto's fate, "Your brother is tough. Nothing that happens in three days is going to be anything more than he can actually handle."

While that was a sugary sweet and nice way to put things, Snake himself wanted to blurt out that it didn't take three days for something messed up to happen. Something could go down in three hours. It all mattered on how tolerant a prisoner Naruto was. If he wasn't a complete asshole to his captors he'd be just fine.

But then again he could be a complete asshole to people that were supposed to be his friends if how he spoke to Snake on a regular basis had anything to do with it.

Damn it, the brat was screwed.

XxX

(March 2008 – Sierra Leone – 100 Miles Inland – Diamond Mining Camp – Naruto: Age 21)

Unceremoniously getting tossed out of the back of a piece of crap pickup truck onto the muddy ground was not the way that Naruto really wanted to start his whole tenure as a diamond miner. Not that things were going to be any better from that point forward anyway.

Getting kicked in the back until he stood back up, Naruto was thrown into a line with other prisoners/workers and had a straining pan shoved into his hands until they were taken to many rows of ditches that had been dug and filled with water for prospecting.

One more knock in the back knocked Naruto into the ditch, utterly soaking him in the dirty water as the soldier who hit him jumped in. Naruto had to hold himself back from retaliating at least a little bit, 'Do not shock him, do not shock him. Shocking the hell out of him blows your cover.'

"Dig American!" The soldier ordered, "Anything you find you bring to the prospect tent! You steal you lose a limb! You try to run and-!" As a show he fired his AK-47 into the air, scaring the people that were beginning to work as well, terrified that one of them would be the target of the half-insane former child soldiers that ran security for the camp, "Understood?"

"Yes sir!" Naruto said fearfully, acting intimidated as he began to work. His eyes looked around at every contour of the camp that he could spot since entering. The place didn't have a fence surrounding it, instead having many elevated lookout towers to keep an eye on the whole place or on the outlying lands.

All of the guards were armed with AK-47s as was expected as the assault rifle of choice for rogue operational units around the world. Cheap, reliable, effective. Easy to see why AKs were always pretty much in demand. He could see the tips of several RPGs in some of the towers as well, showing that they were ready for a raid from an actual enemy if it were to occur. Sending an attack force to take this place down wouldn't end well. Too many innocent people would die in the process. That was why he was doing the mission this way in the first place; to take it down in a subtle manner.

But for now he needed to make an opening for Snake to later get in to investigate any possible connection to George Sears. It would take some time, but as long as he kept his head down and just did his job he could deal with a little yelling and a few jabs with a rifle. He had taken more than his share of yelling during Ranger training and getting pissed off from being hit would just make it sweeter when this place came down around its seams. It wasn't like he couldn't take it.

This panning for material was murder on one's back though. With Naruto's good healing, all he really had to do was flex and stretch a bit to work the kinks out. No one else could really do that, and when they tried to rest for too long they would be threatened to continue working or else.

Hours dragged on to sundown and Naruto had to make a few mistakes and act like he was slacking a bit, because getting a perfect worker like what he had been doing would have resulted in suspicions being thrown his way. What was a few rocks thrown at his head for keeping his cover intact?

Naruto's eyes managed to get sight of a man near him trying to subtly place something from his own pan into his mouth, getting Naruto to widen his eyes and hold back a groan of discontent at what he saw. That guy picked the wrong day to try and hoard diamonds, as he was standing by a new guy; someone guards would try to make sure towed the line.

The supervisor of Naruto's work section wordlessly jerked his head in the man's direction and three guards quickly stormed over to get him out of the pit and drag him over to him to drop him at the man's feet. On his hands and knees at first, the man kept his head down as heavy bootsteps came his way.

All activity stopped and Naruto paid close notice to the man that had everyone's attention. A rather tall, better built African young man with a black beret and a green military uniform with visible shards of metal shrapnel embedded in the left side of his face. He looked to be around Naruto's age amazingly enough, 'Andre Warsamah.' He thought, remembering being briefed on the man that ran the camp and had amassed the security force that kept control.

"_Andre Warsame. He never had a proper military title because his entire career in warfare was illegal by international sanctions. A child soldier that was forced into combat far younger than you Naruto; he didn't have a choice."_

Naruto could still hear Otacon's voice from when he told Naruto who he could expect to come into contact with during this mission. Especially the tone he used during that point of the conversation, and he could remember his own reply, _"Yeah well he sure has a choice now. And fourteen isn't really a child as far as I'm concerned."_

"_Well anyway, he was one of the most skilled of the Small Boy Unit. A superior soldier and fighter even by yours and Snake's standards. He fought in the first and second Liberian Civil Wars but when those ended he kept the remainder of the unit together; taking missions for the highest bidder until he amassed enough money to begin this operation of diamond mining. He has several camps around the Ivory Coast, but this one is his most lucrative by far."_

"So I hear that you've been finding diamonds recently." Warsame said calmly as he stood directly in front of the man that had been collected out of the workers, "Do you mind showing me?" At that, multiple AK-47s were pointed at him only for Warsame to hold up his hand to get the soldiers to lower their weapons. It seemed as if his stare by itself was enough to make the thief have second thoughts about getting away with his scheme.

He couldn't even look Warsame in the eye before reaching towards the back of his throat and pulling out the diamond that he had been hiding back there. All of the other workers were just staring in fear of what would occur next after the man had been found out.

Warsame nodded and took the diamond, handing it over to one of the soldiers before speaking again, "Now seeing this makes me believe you've found more before… or am I wrong about that?" The man shook his head fearfully, "Are you sure you aren't hiding anything else from me?" A frantic nod was the response.

'This guy doesn't seem that messed up at all for being a child soldier.' Naruto thought to himself as he watched this happen. Warsame seemed calm, especially for an African warlord. Of course that could have just been the calm before the storm as he had seen it before, 'Then again he isn't the genocidal kind of warlord, he's just the greedy kind.'

"I'm not in this for any other reason than the money." Warsame said calmly as he walked a lap around the man that had tried to steal a diamond, "I don't care where you all are from. I don't care how old you are, I don't care what your sex is. If you work for me and make me my money, when this land is all mined out and I've made my bones I'll simply let you all leave. But when you steal from me-."

"I didn't steal anything else from you sir!" The thief said, "That diamond was the only one I had, I swear it!"

"I don't believe you for several reasons." Warsame asserted, stopping right in front of the man and pointing in his face, "The most glaring of which being because when you found the diamond you didn't hesitate to put it where you hid it which means you've done this before. The question is simply how much have you done it." He said coldly before smiling amicably, "But if anything I am a fair man, and I am a firm believer in keeping what you can kill. The spoils of war as it were." He snapped his finger and pointed at one of his soldiers, "Give him a machete."

The eyes of the man widened at hearing that, "W-What?"

Instead of immediately responding, Warsame began taking off his military uniform top leaving him in a black tanktop as one of his men handed him a pair of hard wooden fighting sticks. "Pick it up. If you yourself can kill me then everyone can go. No more need for the camp if I'm not here, right? I admire the initiative of taking advantage of a horrible situation to try and profit from it somehow. It's what made me who I am today. So if you can kill me you can keep the diamonds you stole and you and everyone else are free."

Such an offer gave the thief pause. He was given a free right to try and fight back. If he refused he'd probably be tortured until he gave up the other diamonds he stole and then brutally executed. This way at least he had a chance. A slim one since he didn't believe that the other soldiers would adhere to this if he managed to kill Warsame. Still, he had a machete and Warsame had sticks.

"You had better-." Warsame didn't even have time to finish his sentence before the man was upon him, wildly swinging the machete trying to cut him brutally with the sharp tool of a weapon, "I was going to say you had better attack first." With that he ducked a swing that was too high and smacked one of the man's legs out from underneath him before moving slickly right past him, "Because you won't be getting another chance after I do."

Desperately getting up as the thief was not going to just lay down after being given an opportunity like this, he returned to swinging his machete, only this time Warsame started blocking with his sticks. His casual parrying and blocking of the cutting tool was effortless as far as Naruto could see, and really made him want his HF Blade back just in case of emergency because Warsame was just toying with his prey at this point.

After a block, Warsame kicked an inside leg that dropped the man to one knee before delivering a backhand strike with his stick across the face. Blood and teeth sprayed from the man's mouth all over the ground, causing him to drop the machete to cover his mouth desperately for some kind of relief.

As Naruto watched the young warlord walk around the fallen man he could see why Warsame was cool, calm, and collected more than any other African militia head he had ever heard of or had to deal with back during his time with The Patriots. It was a confidence formed by knowing nothing else except fighting. Most children that were picked up to become child soldiers had to be reconditioned; had to have their ways of thinking stripped from them before they became effective. Soldiers like Warsame were lifetime killers. It was all he had ever learned and known, everything he had ever obtained came from his victories in battle. He learned his personal values _after_ learning how to kill a person.

Something like that would instill a confidence in one's own ability from surviving in a hell of a life like that for so long. It made Naruto feel as if he were soft actually once he took a second to think about it.

Warsame rolled the man onto his back with his foot before slamming down one of his sticks hard right on the man's stomach. Instantly the man rolled over in pain and began vomiting on the ground. Not fazed by this whatsoever, Warsame used the end of his stick to begin sifting through the vomit, finding small shiny rocks within. Almost immediately, some of the soldiers began trying to pick the diamonds out while others took the man off elsewhere.

"If you had been a coward and had turned down this fight, things would have ended worse for you." Warsame said, making the soldiers dragging the man off stop for a moment so that he could address him, "I would have had my men cut open your belly to fish the diamonds out. But I still need to get my point across." Another soldier handed him a .44 Magnum handgun that he placed directly under the chin of the thief as he cocked the hammer back, "Do. Not. Steal from me."

BANG!

Everyone else turned away and fearfully cried out at the graphic execution, but then again no one could possibly have expected any better fate for the man. Naruto most certainly didn't, and while it struck a chord with him he realized back in Iraq that he couldn't save everyone around him. People were going to die in his presence, and the best he could do would be to try and help the people that he could. For better or for worse an idiot trying to steal diamonds from a work camp was not someone he could help. Not today.

Naruto watched the entire time as the shot was fired, the gore sprayed about, and the man was dragged off to be gotten rid of somewhere.

"Work is over for today!" One of the soldiers shouted at the stunned silent observing workers, getting them to break up and climb out of the pits, "Go to the lines to be checked for goods and then back to your quarters!"

Climbing out of his excavation pit and falling into line to begin heading towards where everyone would have to give up anything they had found if had anything, Naruto's eyes kept scanning over the camp, watching soldiers unload food and other supplies off of a set of pickup trucks, scrutinizing them closely.

At least he'd have something to report back tonight once he got the opening to do so.

XxX

(Later That Night – Workers' Barracks)

The workers weren't allowed to leave the barracks at all without permission when not working, and food was given to them where they stayed. It was nothing more than watery gruel and bread really, but food was food and Naruto couldn't really be ramen picky at a time like that.

With nightfall came everyone turning in to get their sleep before tomorrow, along with Naruto. There weren't any sheets or pillows and people mostly slept on the floors and under and on top of tables. Naruto himself took a spot against the far wall in the corner where he slept sitting up until a ringing went off inside of his head that no one else could hear, getting him to press a hand against that ear to activate his Codec, "Hello love." Naruto whispered so that no one could hear him if anyone were still awake, "Do you miss me yet Kitty?"

"_I've been thinking about you all night Aniki."_ Catherine said in a teasingly desperate tone, _"All alone in that horrible place with no woman to take good care of you the way I do. If those bad people hurt you, the moment you get back I can nurse you right back to health."_

Naruto rolled his eyes, running a hand through his dirty hair but still found it in him to smirk at his little sister figure's banter. It _did_ make him feel better despite the situation he was in, "I'm fine. Nothing happened that I can't take."

"_Aww. You don't want to see my nurse outfit?"_

"…I'm telling Snake that he needs to hide those stupid magazines of his better." Naruto muttered, getting Catherine to giggle a bit over the line.

"_I needed that. So do you have anything or are you just totally out of luck tonight?"_

"You called me Kitty. And even though it's always nice to hear a sweet voice when I'm stuck like this, I actually have a way for Snake to get in when the time comes." Naruto said softly before continuing to explain, "This place has supply trucks that I'm pretty sure head to the nearest town to get food and other supplies, but I don't know this country's terrain so who knows which town that could be."

A bit of silence went over the line for a moment before Catherine responded, _"Well Otacon does. That's where Snake went tonight. There's a pretty big town about 25 miles from the camp to the west. The only one around for a while so no one that lives there is ever taken for labor. If they did that then they'd never get any necessities. But like I said, Snake's already there doing reconnaissance for that place as an exit point. Otacon's telling Snake now that he has a new mission to find out what he can about the supply trucks. If you're right then we might be able to move up your escape to tomorrow night."_

"The less time in this place the better." Naruto said, grateful that this could all be over sooner than previously thought if Snake could get in. He'd still go about his job the next day and the day after that as if things were normal; he'd look around for whatever he could find to soften up Snake's entry for him whenever he'd make his move, try to locate buildings of some importance, attempt to estimate the power of the enemy, but he couldn't get a chance to leave fast enough for his taste, "I feel naked without a gun or a blade in here. It's been a long time since I _haven't_ had a weapon on me."

"_You're the last person that needs a weapon to fight someone."_

Naruto let out a muffled sigh into his own arm, "None of my ninjutsu can block bullets though."

"_Anyway, I'll let you go before I get you into trouble. Good luck, and don't get yourself shot."_

"I'll try. Later Kitty." Naruto said as the conversation ended. With his calming conversation with Catherine complete for that night, he decided to try and get some sleep while he could. He still had a lot to get through before this came to a conclusion.

XxX

(The Next Day – Outlying Village 25 miles east from Diamond Camp)

Walking around once again in civilian clothes, Snake had been all over town, following the obvious sources of where the camp could get supplies. It didn't take long for Snake to find the very truck that he had been told to look out for. Instead of food like what had been unloaded in camp the day before, Snake found the men picking up other necessities like gasoline for their vehicles, small arms weapons, ammunition, and some leisure items from a warehouse that sold to them in bulk.

Better to supply the militia with what they asked for at a discount than to have them just take it and take you as well to work the diamond grind. That was the general attitude of everyone in this town, and for the most part they were left alone and were something of a protectorate of the militia.

Snake walked off out of sight into an off-street alley to get access to his Codec, "Otacon. I'm sure I can get on one of the trucks now. If I don't do it here I won't get a cleaner chance to get right into the heart of the base later."

"_Naruto's given us some intel and he'll give us more later, but are you sure about this? Do you really want to just head in like this? The only support you'll have is me for what it's worth and Naruto."_

"That's fine. Too many cooks spoil the dish after all." Before planning to light a cigarette, Snake thought better of it and set it aside for later. The smell of cigarettes wouldn't do him any favors for what he was about to do, "The kid's all I'm going to need anyway if he isn't too beaten up to work when I get in there."

"_And if he is too hurt to do anything?"_

"He won't be."

"_Confident aren't we?"_

"I've seen that kid dig half a dozen bullets out of himself just to bitch about it and keep on going. Yes, I'm sure no matter what happens he'll still be more dangerous than anyone we run into in that camp, even Warsame."

XxX

(That Night – With Naruto – Diamond Mining Camp)

A second day of forced labor bore a little bit of worthwhile fruit as Naruto had been sent to the furthest pits of the camp away from the barracks to work for the day. That meant that he had more of the place to see, actually getting a look at where the goods were kept. He even got to see the quarters of the soldiers and the main building where Warsame himself stayed. He could swear that he saw the blades of a chopper peeking from behind that area, but did they really have a helicopter available to them?

This influx of info was the most useful one for later when all hell would begin to break loose, but for the moment it was still daytime, he was still a worker, therefore he had to work. And work he did. He had even found a diamond amazingly enough. One that he kept in a secret place for his own use later once he got out. Unlike the man from the day before he was actually good at smuggling things.

The sun was a killer though. He wasn't going to get any tanner without sunburning, but the Kyuubi kept him from turning red and flaky… while keeping the intense sensitivity on his skin. The furry, angry red bastard.

Needless to say, the whole experience was pissing him off slowly.

"Ow…" Naruto muttered to himself back inside of the workers' barracks at he touched at the skin on his arm. Catherine hadn't called him and he wasn't going to risk it without it being necessary. There was probably a good reason why not, so he decided to trust in it and just prepare for the next day.

However, across the open doorway of the building Naruto was staying in, he saw a shadow close to the ground dart across. He froze in place at his spot against the wall and just stared at the doorway, waiting for something to happen and on cue it darted across again. He knew he saw something that time.

Naruto stood up and started stepping over the others in the building, leaving a clone in his place to keep up appearances. Upon getting outside, Naruto crept along to the back of the place where he found three unconscious soldiers laying on the ground… next to a cardboard box.

With a twitching eye, Naruto walked over and kicked the box only for it to scuttle a few feet away from him. This time, Naruto picked the whole box up, expecting to see his fellow field operative underneath, instead finding the largest rat he had ever seen in his life looking up at him and hissing. A surprised Naruto kicked the rat into the woods and let out a small breath.

"Damn it, I was going to call you to tell you to come out here. I told Otacon and Catherine not to say anything until I got to you."

Naruto turned around and saw Snake standing there in his sneaking suit, bandanna on and all. Hiding how happy he was to see a friendly face for the first time in two days, Naruto put on a wry smile, "I thought you'd been hiding in the box."

"Well… that's how I got here on the truck."

A deadpan look crossed Naruto's face at that bit of information, "I knew you would." He then grinned widely when Snake handed him his HF Blade, strapping it on across his chest and over his shoulder. Snake handed Naruto an AK-47 that he had taken from one of the defeated soldiers that he also slung over his back over the sword's sheathe and felt whole again once more, "Oh, this is much better."

"So I found the main buildings." Snake said, pointing his thumb in the appropriate direction, "The plan… is to clear the main gate and get the prisoners out there before anything else can be done."

Naruto pat himself down now that he was armed and nodded, taking a second to rip off the extra magazines that were on the defeated soldiers on the ground that Snake didn't take, "We're splitting up right?"

"Are you too weak right now to fight?" Snake asked, adjusting his own AK-47 in his grasp.

A scoff came from Naruto who started tinkering around in his mouth for a moment, "I'm never too weak to fight." He mumbled out before pulling something out of his mouth with a crack that Snake could hear.

He wanted to cringe at the sound, but that would mean that something Naruto did got to him mentally, and he would never admit that, "Did… did you just rip your tooth out?"

"No." Naruto said before spitting some blood onto the ground as he held up a small rock with a slightly bloody grin reflecting a bit of pride in his reasonable accomplishment, "I jammed a diamond down between two of my molars to hide it. That shit hurt."

"Okay…" Snake really just wanted to get this show on the road at that point, 'Just when you think this brat can't get any weirder…' He gestured his head towards the workers' barracks, "I'm going to clear out the front and get the prisoners going. You go further in since you've seen more of this place. You know it a bit better."

That was actually fine with Naruto. After trying to get these bastards rich for the last two days he was looking somewhat forward to flipping it around on them. If he had to venture a ways further into the camp he was all over that. He'd just have to be out of sight until Snake got everything ready to go.

Naruto slipped out of sight and Snake took that as his own cue to begin cleaning house on the way to the main gate. If this was done right this would all be over within twenty minutes and everyone would be going home.

XxX

(Soldier's Barracks)

Avoiding soldier's patrols happened to be easy. Pitch dark out with no moon was his kind of time to run about. Running circles around the militia members without a fight, Naruto managed to make it to the heart of the camp as he started moving on the roofs of the actual staying places of the soldiers. He needed to grab an RPG before this whole thing started so that he could neutralize this place within one shot.

As he moved from roof to roof, Naruto could hear the laughing and all around raucous behavior from the militia members, but as he advanced onto the roof of the last barrack he didn't hear it at all. Jumping down, he made his way to a window and found that he had found Warsame's cabin. Warsame's cabin with the man himself inside, and he was in the middle of a conversation.

"I am sorry but I don't fight for you anymore King." Warsame said, sitting in his office, surrounded by two soldiers as security, "I'm afraid that you can stay here for as long as you like. Me and my brothers won't take part in your war again. That is final."

Sitting across from him was a man in a long trench coat with grey hair and a grey beard with his hands clasped in a patient manner as he responded, "What about loyalty? We fought together all those years ago for a less important reason than the one I'm asking you for now."

"Freedom?" Warsame said with a bit of a laugh before his face turned stony, "Oh, I remember that wasn't why you were fighting during the first civil war. King, you want to talk about loyalty. That's something that you have when you have a choice in the matter. I can't honestly say that I or anyone here has any kind of loyalty to you. How can a child pulled from their home hold any kind of loyalty to the man that stuck a gun into their hand and told them to kill or die?"

Despite Warsame's even tone, it was clear that he was holding back quite a bit of ire for the man in front of him, and that was when Naruto took a better look at him and realized that it was the same man that had been with Ocelot when he was in Lyon a few years back, President Sears.

Well hell, this entire mission had circulated around the fact that before any real record of George Sears doing any politicking in the U.S. came forward, there was an existing photo of him with Liberian rebels looking like a combatant. And now Warsame was saying that Sears had been the one in command of the Small Boy Unit from the sound of things.

Continuing his statement, Warsame dragged his hand down the side of his face over the places where shrapnel scars were as clear as day, "I was one of the ones that survived and you decided to train me a bit to get some more use out of me. Then when the war ended you just left us alone, with no direction, no enemy to fight, no family to go back to for any of us. And you come back twelve years later after trying to control the free world doesn't work for you and you think that you just have our allegiance?"

"There isn't anything free about America." Sears grit out, still trying to keep an even tone, "That's what this is all about. Soon enough the illusion of freedom will be complete. And then what will there be?"

"I don't care about what happens over there." Warsame said casually, feeling good at having the upper hand over his former taskmaster, "In case you haven't noticed, this is Africa. This is where I consider things to really be free. If you don't like something, you kill who's in charge. You take it, you change it for yourself."

"You think you've been allowed to do what you like for this long just because you're in Africa?" Sears said with a humoring laugh at Warsame's expense, "You think with all of the attention that's been brought towards all of the troubles on this continent that you've just skirted past any kind of scrutiny? You were left untouched as a favor to me from those that were above me while I was President you idiot. I was the only one keeping you and the rest of these fools safe. You owe me."

"I owe you?" At this point Warsame stood up out of his chair and nearly shoved it back through the wall he had gotten up with such authority, "I owe you nothing! None of us owe you a damned thing! We killed for you! Died for you! Cast away our families and homes and killed our families just to stay alive, because of you! The only reason I haven't ordered you strung up and shot is because you simply don't matter to me any longer King! Your politics and bravado are just that, and let me tell all that will get you around here!" He pulled up his .44 Magnum and emptied all of the bullets from the revolver except for one, "A bullet to the head. Now get off of my property."

Despite finally setting off Warsame, Sears didn't seem to care one bit, though he did stand up and prepare to leave, "You're being a fool. What I'm telling you about The Patriots is very real. When they gain full control of it all how long do you think it will take for Africa to fall into line as well? There's going to be no more place in the world for a man like you."

"There's always a place for greed." Warsame finished as his men escorted Sears out of the cabin.

With the conversation concluded, Naruto sat down at the side of the window he had been peeking through, out of sight as he got onto his Codec to report some of what he had just seen and heard for posterity.

XxX

(With Snake – Front of Work Camp)

The guards at the front of the camp itself weren't really a problem as far as Snake was concerned. It was mostly the matter of the guard towers that while they didn't have spotlights or any method of illuminating the grounds were still dangerous if they saw something moving in the dark.

His method of getting the others to escape wouldn't meet with positive results if that were the case so he needed to make them a nonfactor. He couldn't just shoot the guards as he only had weapons that he had procured on-site, that meant that he merely had the AK-47. He had no silenced weaponry to use and for a moment wished that Naruto had been the one to take this part due to the fact that he could probably throw something at the bastards to take them out quietly, but Naruto wasn't savvy to the escape plan and was too far to go fetch at this point.

Plan B would have to be enough, and that was only going to be a sharp modification of Plan A.

With an irritated growl, Snake skulked his way over to the place near the front gate where the camp vehicles were located. A few pickup trucks, small cars, and one military-grade flatbed truck with roof frames in the flatbed missing the tarpaulin that was intended to go over it. That was perfect.

Having taken out all of the guards around the workers' quarters already, all he had to do from that point was just get them all out. He could get them to the vehicles. An earlier headcount gave him the number of just under fifty people to get out, and while that was a lot it was still very doable.

Now as he stood crouched inside of the first cabin of the workers' quarters he had to quietly wake them up and escort the lot of them to the vehicle pool, "Ahem." Snake said quietly, but it was loud enough to get the attention of someone who was barely asleep. His eyes opened and he stared at Snake in complete surprise, getting Snake to put a finger to his own mouth to mime shushing the person, "If you want to get out of here start helping me wake these people up. And make sure you all stay quiet."

He got a tentative nod from the man who proceeded to begin moving around, waking up the others. Snake would leave that cabin to him and went to the other two in order to get them roused as well.

XxX

(With Naruto – Soldiers' Barracks – Warsame's Cabin)

At the back of the cabin, several of Warsame's men watched at the ex-President of the United States climbed into his helicopter and started it up, a loud whir coming from the blades as it began warming up. He wasn't getting to Sears to beat some info out of him, so that only left the man inside.

With the noise that helicopter was making, Naruto probably could have emptied the clip of his AK-47 and no one would have heard a thing… it could have woken the dead.

Naruto headed around the front of the cabin where he saw two men guarding the door, two men that were then cut down with a quick-draw runthrough of the HF Blade. With that, he crept through the front door, dragging the two dead men in with him before locking the door behind him for privacy and personal security purposes.

He found himself in a in a small annex room with an open doorway where he just dropped the bodies and posted himself against the wall to peek into the next and only other room in the building; Warsame's office.

It was pretty bare, with a cot on one wall and his desk as he had seen through the window, but there was also a footlocker in front of his desk, a real locker that probably housed his firearms, and the man himself still sitting at his desk patiently before he reached up from beneath the desk, placing two machetes on the surface of the desk, "Come in." Naruto ignored that and continued to pretend that he was not there until Warsame spoke again, "When you've fought as much as I have you can feel when someone is trying to get close enough to kill you."

Well there wasn't anywhere to go around to, and he wasn't going back outside. So Naruto just walked on inside holding his sword in one hand carefully just in case, "I'm not really here to kill you though." He had to think about that statement for a second before speaking again, "Well I kind of am, because these people are going back home tonight one way or another, but that's not the reason I'm here."

The eyes of Warsame seemed to be trying to gather things about Naruto before he let out a chuckle, "Ah, you're one of the new workers that my men picked up the other day." He looked into Naruto's eyes and shook his head, "Apparently they can't tell when someone is too dangerous to be kept in an environment like this. If I had been the one that found you I would have killed you to be safe."

"You'd have been right and I would have failed right then if that was the case then." Naruto said before pointing his sword at Warsame, "Tell me something. That man. The one that left. Exactly who is he to you and what did he want?"

"You mean George Sears? You don't know the name of the last U.S. President?" Warsame joked before getting serious, "Who he was to me doesn't matter anymore. But what he wanted? He figured that he could persuade me to lend my power and my men to his cause, his strategy to take control back from The Patriots… whoever they are. American matters don't mean anything to me."

"What did he tell you about them?" Naruto asked. If Warsame really didn't care and felt talkative, he might as well get all he could out of the situation, "Anything on who they were? Where they're located?" Laughter then began to come from Warsame, "What's funny?"

"Your questions." The warlord replied, taking notice of the slight offense on Naruto's face, "No not the questions themselves. It's just that King wouldn't even give me the common sense answers like that. Those questions that are so basic and simple; where is our enemy and who are they? He couldn't answer them. He doesn't know. And he expects me to throw my full weight and resources behind his rebellion against a nameless, faceless group? Fool." The sound of the helicopter lifting off then filled their ears, "Looks like you missed your chance to get him if you wanted him to answer personally."

"Fine." Naruto said with something of a frown pronounced on his whisker-marked face, "But I've still got to beat you. These people that work here. You can't do this to them. And even if you let me leave with them you'd still just get more or take the same people back."

Warsame stood up from his chair and picked up his pair of machetes, "Well I believe in keeping what you kill. So if you kill me feel free to attempt to do so." He then kicked his desk, sliding it forward at Naruto who jumped onto the wooden surface as it passed underneath his leap. Warsame rushed forward and tried to cut into Naruto's legs only for Naruto to block by stabbing his sword into the desk, bracing it with one of his feet pushing against it, "You really aren't just some wayward foreigner. You've got skill. I've killed in one move doing far less."

Not saying anything in return, Naruto jumped down from the desk and pulled his sword out and kicked Warsame in the stomach, forcing him to land against the wall and block a return slash from the single sword with his pair of machete.

In his head, the feeling of his clone that he left in the workers' barracks dispelling went off, telling him that Snake was currently moving the prisoners. But the distraction of gaining that bit of knowledge let Warsame switch off of the wall and gain some distance where he could begin swinging him weapons in open air.

Naruto blocked one of the strikes and moved right out of the way of another that he kicked to the side to push further out of the way. Warsame went low and tried to sweep Naruto's legs out from under him only for Naruto to side-flip in order to avoid it, but on his follow-through spin he slashed out with a machete and got something due to the blood that flew and splattered on the floor.

Finishing his evasive move, Naruto landed back on his feet before touching at the right side of his face where blood was coming from a horizontal slash on his cheek, 'Fuck, it's deep.' The Kyuubi better have planned on healing that without leaving a scar or he would have been upset.

Of course getting cut in the first place upset him, and the fight started taking a sharp turn from that point forward.

The next time Naruto started going on the attack with the HF Blade, Warsame's previous actions of trying to block with one arm while countering with the other were not enough. Naruto knocked his arm right away each time he tried to do so until he learned that both arms were needed to deal with Naruto's growing angry strength.

Naruto ghosted an attack with his sword to make Warsame react with trying to block again, but instead of that Naruto used one of his hands to grab one of Warsame's wrists where he quickly began shocking the African warlord with his electric chakra, "RAAAAHHH!" He somehow got enough control over his muscles to rip his hand from Naruto's grip, but he dropped a machete.

His guard was also wide open and Naruto swung upward with the HF Blade, cutting the man's right arm off underneath the elbow with one move. Naruto had never been so grateful that the helicopter was loud as it was taking off and leaving, because Warsame continued to yell until Naruto cut off his head with one more attack.

Slightly panting at the fast pace of the short fight, Naruto eventually simply sheathed the sword on his back and stared down at the headless body of Warsame until his Codec went off. It woke Naruto up and got him to begin digging around the room looking for something useful information-wise, "Yeah?" Naruto said, a hand on his ear as he rifled through the desk drawers and whatnot.

"_Kid tell me you're ready to roll on out of here."_

XxX

(With Snake – Camp Motor Pool)

"Kid tell me you're ready to roll on out of here." Snake urged over the Codec, ducking down by the military truck as many of the prisoners were quietly climbing in the large flatbed back per Snake's instructions, "We're ready to leave."

"_Yeah. Warsame isn't a problem anymore. But we can't really just leave can we? When we go and they figure out that Warsame is dead… Snake we're not going to do enough damage to this place to stop them for good. When this is over for tonight these guys are just going to go out and-."_

"Yeah, don't worry about that. Just make sure you get your ass to the vehicles and get here fast." Checking over the progress of the prisoners to find them all loaded up and ready to go with two of them up front ready to drive, Snake checked over his AK-47's magazine, "We're covering their retreat."

"_Got it. Be there soon."_

Snake took the safety off of the gun and made sure he had a bead on the three towers at the front of the camp as he could hear helicopter blades spinning louder and louder. He'd just ask about that later, "Make sure you come in shooting." With that he turned the Codec off as the sound overhead of the helicopter grew over encompassing, 'Opening.' He kicked the door of the truck's cab to get the attention of the driver, "Go now!"

He wasn't going to get a better chance now to get them a headstart, and he wasn't going to blow it. With the sound of a low-flying helicopter's blades covering the area, Snake fired a burst of shots at the farthest tower, dropping the guard in it just as the man behind the wheel managed to start the truck.

It pulled off as Snake fired at the second tower, but as the bullets ripped through this guard and he fell, he apparently tripped and knocked the propped-up RPG in the tower with him over, causing it to go off and destroy the tower top in a fiery blast, "Fuck!" Snake shouted as he saw the third tower guard snapping to attention at the explosion. Wasting no time, Snake fired and took him down.

With the helicopter from before leaving and the natural sounds of the camp becoming dominant again, yells from the soldier side of the camp were loud, all yelling about there being an attack on the camp.

Luckily the truck burst right through the flimsy blockade at the front that was more for looks than for functionality as an actual barrier, and just in time as well, because the militia began pouring out of the barracks toting their guns and running for the vehicles.

Snake took cover behind a small car as bullets started flying through the air and with a cold, surgical approach began picking off targets in the night before they got close enough to overwhelm him. While he could have just hotwired a vehicle and followed, he was covering the escape of the prisoners. Not only that, but he was waiting for Naruto and he wasn't leaving that brat behind until he found that the young man was dead.

The rattle of AK-47s filled the air and bullets flew around Snake's head. One shot even ricocheting by Snake's head off of the car roof he was shooting using cover. The empty click of a spend magazine had Snake duck down behind the car to reload and continue shooting when he heard panic coming from the back of the enemy's lines.

Peeking back up to check things over, Snake saw a red human outline sweeping through the overmatched militia like a buzzsaw. Those that turned fast enough to actually get a shot off on whatever it was simply couldn't aim straight enough to hit their swift moving executioner. Even an RPG was discharged as Naruto killed the shooter just as he fired the rocket, forcing him to take out a few of his own men as well.

And that was when Snake finally realized where he had seen that thing before. He had gotten a way closer look at it when he had been fighting Metal Gear REX at Shadow Moses Island. Most notably when it was running circles around the bulky metal monster, helping him try to tear it apart, "Damn Naruto… what in the world is that?" He chalked it up to whatever Dr. Clark had done to screw with Naruto's genes during his capture five years ago.

He only really hoped that Naruto would stop fast enough to keep from making him an accidental victim as well.

But he received his answer when Naruto jumped right over the car he had been taking cover behind, crouching next to Snake in a similar manner. He seemed to glare hatefully at Snake, holding the HF Blade in his mouth with his teeth while he used his… claws? His claws to rend through the enemy on his way over. Since when did he have red eyes? Oh, wait they were blue again.

Naruto dropped the sword from his mouth and resheathed it on his back, "Hey Snake, miss me?" The squalid-looking blonde boy said, his voice changing from being slightly scratchy and growly to going back to normal as he pulled his AK-47 from his back and began firing much the way Snake had earlier, "I thought we had to go. So let's go already."

Snake's jaw was slightly dropped at how he could just stand there shooting and acting like he hadn't just run through more than two dozen soldiers like a glowing red bulldozer. He made to try and grab at the aura that had been around Naruto's body moments ago that he could literally feel without even touching it but it was gone, "So you're just going to act like that didn't just happen?"

"Yep." Naruto said, showing a little irritation over the topic as he continued to point and shoot, "Do you really want to sit here and talk about it with me or do you want to leave?" The two stared at each other in a test of wills for a moment until more shots ricocheted off of the car and Snake moved to procure them some transport while Naruto kept shooting.

Choosing to slip into one of the pickup trucks that had brought him into the base, Snake hotwired the car and let himself have a small smile at getting it started within seconds, "Kid!" He heard two thuds and a weight in the back of the truck and felt Naruto knock on the window before going back to firing away, "Okay then."

"Give me your mags." Naruto said, reaching his hand through the open passenger's side window to receive three extra magazines of bullets for the AK-47 that he was about to put to liberal use, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" There would be no better use for the small squad of five than to hold off any approach from the militia while he and Snake got off of the premises.

The truck made tracks and quickly escaped the base amid a hail of gunfire that was returned by Naruto's clones, allowing the young man himself to sink down and sit with his back against the cabin of the truck, wincing as he could feel the pains from his clones being shot and killed. He himself even had a bullet in his shoulder for all of the trouble.

Snake banged on the roof from inside to get Naruto's attention, "You alright out there kid?"

"Fine." Naruto said, still twitching at feeling bullets rip through his clones' bodies. That was definitely the last of them, he was keeping count when they went down, "You know that they're just gonna gear up and ride on the nearest town and tear it up right?"

Though Naruto couldn't see it from his place outside, Snake was grinning at this point, "I told you not to worry about it. It's not going to be a problem in the end."

Naruto turned around and looked through the back window of the truck with a deadpan expression, "How can you say that it's not going to be a-?" At that point the sounds of vehicles went past them in the direction of the camp, "Were those military trucks? And do I hear choppers?"

"Otacon had Catherine stooge to the Sierra Leone military on the camp and then leaked intelligence that it would be very vulnerable tonight due to a hired operation." Snake explained, "All she had to do was go to government office and turn on the waterworks on how her brother got kidnapped and that was all they wanted to hear. The last thing Sierra Leone needs is the U.S. Government actually sending soldiers here once someone gets that news back there, and the threat of that got them to send a strike force to take the camp down."

They could both already hear the guns of the choppers going to work from there. So it really wasn't their problem anymore. Relieved that they had gotten away clean, Naruto sank his head back against the metal of the truck, "Kitty _does_ know how to cry when she wants to."

"So what was that red thing that you did?"

Naruto cracked an eye and let out a sigh. He supposed he could give Snake something to bite on as far as his strange abilities went. It was too weird to just ignore, "It's something that happens when I get really mad. I get faster, stronger, and you can't kill me. Well, you could kill me. It would just be _way_ harder."

'Harder than normal?' Snake thought to himself with a roll of his eyes. It made enough sense as he had seen a human being bonded with a cybernetic suit, a living psychic with telekinetic abilities, among other weird things. Why not have abilities that were influenced by pure rage? It seemed like a warfare useful thing to try and place into soldiers, "Whatever kid. I'm not really a geneticist. As long as you don't kill me with it, I don't care. I've just seen it twice now and I never asked about it."

"Kitty doesn't know, so don't tell her." Naruto asked off-handedly, "She knows I'm weird. She doesn't need to know just how weird I am. You're the only person that's seen it that I haven't killed."

"I feel so special." The dry, sarcastic delivery from the elder soldier got Naruto to snicker a bit before he settled down and basked in the silence of the drive, "So… you said that you're really angry when you use that power. What got you that angry this time?" It took a moment and Naruto didn't verbally answer, but a folder was dropped through the back window of the truck at Snake's side, "What's this?"

The tone in Naruto's voice during his reply was sharp and succinct. A contrast from how he normally spoke to anyone, even enemies, "It's what Sears tried to get Warsame to join up with him for."

Snake spared a glance down at the folder as he still had to drive, but his eyes went right back to the intel when he saw the first picture that had slid out of the top of the folder for him to see in the dark. A skyward shot of a very large structure that was in the water, surrounding an oil spill with writing of the structure's name at the top. Snake could see what exactly had set Naruto off as the focal point of whatever Sears wanted the militia of former child soldiers for. It honestly pissed him off a little too to think about it.

"Big Shell marine decontamination facility…"

XxX

(One Month Later – Hideout on Mongolian/Russian Border)

"Big Shell marine decontamination facility…" Olga said, sitting at a table with shots of the entire facility placed all over the surface while Sniper Wolf stood with her, keeping a wary eye on the other company in the room. She pursed her lips, but she knew what she had to do, "Mr. Sears…"

"Please don't refer to me by that name." Sears said, calmly sitting across from the table as Ocelot stood in the corner of the room, "That was the name that _they_ gave me."

Nodding in understanding of his hatred of _them_, Olga proceeded with her statement, "Why do you want my mercenary unit to participate in your mission in this place?"

"Because you of all people should know just how they've used you." The sharp eyes of the former President seemed to bore into her as he continued to speak, "Everything that happened that night in New York was by their design. The loss of all of your men, the loss of your father, the beginning of your hard times. For God's sake you work as muscle for the Russian Mafia. All because of them. I should have come to you the second this plan began coming together."

He most certainly wasn't wrong. Olga did despise The Patriots. She wanted them dead. But that feeling had to take a backseat to another feeling, one that was more important. However that latter feeling required her to accept the offer coming her way.

"I accept." She said, putting a satisfied smile on Sears' face, "If you can guarantee our share of the 30 billion dollars, and the annihilation of The Patriots and their control from the shadows I am with you."

"Ocelot said that you were looking for blood after what happened during the Tanker Incident." Sears said, extending his hand towards Olga and pointing his head at the Russian cowboy in question, "I've seen your men. They seem to look up to him almost as much as you. I'm looking forward to working with this group."

Olga and Wolf shared a glance as the woman gave her a look that said 'you have to do what you have to do', prompting Olga to reach forward and shake the man's hand, "Likewise." She said with a million-dollar poker face, "So if I cannot refer to you as George Sears, what should I call you then?"

Upon the asking of her question, Ocelot smirked from his place against the wall as Sears answered boldly, "I'm taking my true name that those bastards gave me. What I was originally designated by until I became their puppet… so that I can let them know just who it is that is ending their world. For the duration of the mission you may call me Solidus Snake."

* * *

><p><strong>School is on Tuesday… it's totally going to suck. I've got two classes that for the first time since I've been at college I have no idea about and I have to take. If I actually have to focus in these classes and study I will not be loving the next four months of my life.<strong>

**I've got nothing important to say, I just wanted to vent a bit. I've been working nonstop for the last two weeks and I need sleep.**

**Kenchi out.**


	24. Into the Breach Once More

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I believe that taking up recreational drinking would help with this, but I'm not that kind of guy. I'm more of the wallow in my own misery and suppress it without saying a word so that I get an ulcer in 10 to 20 years kind of guy.

**Chapter 24: Into the Breach Once More**

* * *

><p>(April 29, 2009 – New York, New York – Verrazano Bridge)<p>

"_Snake, do you remember that sinking of the tanker two years ago?"_ The voice of a figure that sounded much like Colonel Campbell came over a Codec transmission.

"Of course." In return, a very youthful and confident response was given by an unfamiliar man.

"_Terrorists blow a hole in an oil tanker full of crude barely 20 miles off the shore of Manhattan. Your classic nightmare." "It didn't take long for the government to put an oil fence around the whole mess. And then that massive cleanup facility went up inside."_

"The Big Shell." "I hear the cleanup isn't quite over yet."

"_It takes time. But in the meantime the Shell's become a landmark. A symbol of environmental protection."_

A gap in the ongoing briefing conversation took place as military chatter came over the radio, courtesy of orders given to two helicopters flying underneath the Verrazano Bridge, heading straight out to sea, _"Calling teams Alpha and Bravo… deploy at the Big Shell as scheduled." _

"_Approximately six hours ago, the Big Shell was seized by an armed group. Former members of the Navy SEAL's special anti-terrorist training squad; Dead Cell. Russian private army members may also be involved. It's a highly trained group and they have the Big Shell under complete control."_

As the two attack helicopters passed over the long stretch of blue ocean that sat between Manhattan Island and a mammoth structure sticking up out of the water. It was a massive metal construct roughly comprised of two great pillars that rose the height of a skyscraper out of the sea, each with six separate struts that were the outlying buildings attached via connection with halls in the air.

The two main core structures and their struts were connected by a single bridge spanning between one strut to another on the other core so that travel could be done between them. It looked like some kind of military construct in its layout if one were to ignore the fact that it had come into existence from an episode of terrorism. In the image of two hexagons connected north to south end on end.

Surrounding the entire facility, keeping aquatic vessels from getting past and keeping the oil that had been sent onto the surface of the water from spacing out any further in the harbor, there was an oil fence that gave the team within it at the Big Shell the chance to clean the spill up.

Under the sound cover of choppers barreling straight for the Big Shell facility, a person in a black suit with a slight skeletal design popped their fully skull-masked head up out of the water to observe the whole scene before just as quickly diving back underneath the waves where more chatter to the military aircrafts came through the channel, _"Come in from downwind, then pull up fast! Get ready to fast rope down to Shell One, five minutes to ETA. Alpha's top priority is to rescue and safeguard the President! Team Bravo is to watch out for Stillman and get those C4s disarmed."_

Meanwhile underneath the water, the man clad in the black swimming suit swam rapidly towards the Big Shell stealthily, still speaking for his mission briefing while doing so, "What are their demands?" He asked.

"_Thirty billion dollars."_

"Thirty billion dollars? What makes them think they can get that much?"

"_There was a government-sponsored tour going on at the Big Shell that day, and they took hostages. A VIP from one of the major conservation groups, and one from our own government. The 'Most Important Person' in a sense. James Johnson, the President. Unless the demands are met, the terrorists intend to blow the Big Shell out of the water."_

"The crude will ignite, turning all of Manhattan Harbor into an inferno." The sneaky swimmer finished, knowing what would occur in such a case as he reached oil fence and began swimming around it. He found a hole that had already been cut before he had arrived and slipped inside of it.

"_That's not the worst-case scenario. If the chlorides being used to decontaminate the seawater go up with the oil, toxins releasing catastrophic levels of dioxins will be released. In other words; the bay's ecosystem will be wiped out, and the sea will be turned into a toxic soup for centuries, becoming the worst environmental disaster in history."_

Remaining silent and letting this information sink in properly, the man infiltrating the facility swam up through the bottom of a deep sea dock tunnel that was used to check for irregularities around Big Shell's structure underneath the water.

"_You have two mission objectives. One: infiltrate the offshore decontamination facility Big Shell and safeguard the President and other hostages. And two: disarm the terrorists by any means necessary."_ Still listening to his briefing from the Colonel, the operative emerged from the water and climbed up onto the storage area of the docks that housed many things for diving including heavy suits and other equipment, "_FOXHOUND remains a covert body. Don't alert anyone to your presence, that is an order. Progress?"_

"This is Snake." The masked swimmer said as he checked around the room to make sure that he was alone, "We're in luck. Looks like there aren't any sentries posted here. The lights on the plant's struts are functioning. I won't have to use the IR (infrared) goggles."

"_Any problems?"_

"There was a brand new hole cut through the oil fence. Someone else other than me wanted to get in pretty badly. What about Seal Team 10?"

"_They landed on the roof of the Big Shell as planned. And by the way Snake, we're changing your codename for all following communication from this point forward. Just as a precaution. You are now designated 'Raiden'. So now _Raiden…_ you've been through infiltration in VR training, correct?"_

As the young man moved through the room past all of the shelves, lockers, and crates, he reached the door at the back wall, turned the hatch to open it, and made his way through the door to begin creeping through a hallway, "I've completed 300 missions in VR." He said, proud of this fact. If he weren't trying to sneak along he probably would have puffed out his chest, "I feel like some kind of legendary mercenary. I'll contact you to let you know if anything changes."

At the end of the hallway he found a storage room with forklifts and many volatile chemical supplies in tough, tight crates, but he also found a sentries wearing a balaclava mask, grey, brown, and black camouflaged uniforms, and using AN-94 weaponry. A Russian weapon.

That had to be the Russian private army mercenaries that he had been told took over Big Shell. There was just one thing though… the men were all knocked out. Raiden managed to catch a small glimpse of a man with brown hair going down his neck, wearing a black sneaking suit that looked a bit similar to his own only an older model without a mask. The perpetrator.

He immediately got onto his Codec as the elevator that was supposed to take him to the top of the strut went up without him, "Colonel, there's definitely another intruder in here besides me."

"_That's not possible."_

"He was alone. It's not a team. It looks like a solo job." Raiden said, checking over the man's work. The guns had never fired a shot. He had destroyed them without making a peep or actually having to fight, "We may not know who he is, but he managed to take care of every sentry in the area; they're all out cold. Whoever he is he's got some skills."

"_We need to get an ID… but for now you can take advantage of the situation and get to work. Make sure you plug into the node in the strut to get access to Big Shell's facilities network. Make sure you copy the map of the structure so that you can use Soliton Radar."_

He immediately ran over to an official-looking computer by the elevator and linked his own nanomachines with that of the device. It took a few seconds, but in the corner of Raiden's vision he was given a small map of his immediate area, complete with the signatures of the unconscious men around the room. He was not about to skimp out on activating that. The radar had saved his ass too much during his VR Training to ignore.

"_We have a substitute data analyst to record the specifics on your mission until its completion. Meet the mission analyst. She'll be overseeing your progress along with me and will be your support."_

The frequency flickered before a young woman's voice came up, _"Jack, can you hear me?"_

"Rose?" Raiden said in shock as the sound of the elevator dropping the long way back down to his level of the facility. He seemed legitimately surprised that this person was in on his mission, "What the hell are you doing here? Colonel, what's going on here? Why her?"

The Colonel's voice popped back up over Raiden's communications with an explanation already planned, _"The FOXHOUND analyst that was supposed to take part in this mission was in an accident. Rosemary here was brought in as a replacement."_ The man said matter-of-factly, _"According to the files she knows you better than anyone else."_

As the elevator finished dropping and unlocking its doors, Raiden continued to grumble, "Rose may be in the service, but an intelligence analyst is no field officer. She's never been a part of a field mission, this is insane." Pot… meet kettle.

"_I have my own reasons for selecting her for this mission soldier."_ The colonel asserted, seemingly tired of hearing the young masked man's griping, _"I know your VR Training in and out but sometimes that isn't enough. I know you're familiar with the Shadow Moses Incident. If there's anything to be learned from that incident, it was the power of the operative's will to survive. In the field you need all the help you can get when it's available to you."_

"_You're stuck with me whether you like it or not Jack." _ Rosemary said resolutely. And it wasn't like there was too much he could do about it either. First of all, he was in the middle of a mission, and second of all it came from those above him so what could he do? _"I'll perform the mission and record your mission data. I'm still aware that I'm technically not a part of the mission control team. I'm just a normal girl that's worried about Jack. But that means Colonel, that I'm not required to follow your orders outside of any immediate duties. Jack isn't simply field personnel for me to track. So I'll be monitoring and keeping track of every conversation you have with him."_

"_Sure… given the circumstances. But be sure to refer to him as Raiden for the duration of the mission."_

Though he wouldn't have said it, the masked Raiden was never so grateful for the elevator finally reaching his level and opening its doors. Deciding to get out of there before the guards woke up since he had come in unarmed as was the standard method of procure-on-site for FOXHOUND operatives, Raiden got onto the freight elevator and hit the button to head on up.

"_Jack… do you know what tomorrow is?"_

"April 29th?" He replied in confusion. Was there supposed to be something special about that day in particular? He thought the Codec conversation had ended. Raiden had been unaware that Rosemary was still on the line after the Colonel had ended it, "I can't say I remember. Sorry."

"_It's okay. I'll keep trying until I know the answer. Take care Jack."_

And with that, Rosemary vacated the lines and ended the conversation. Now Raiden could put her involvement in this situation out of his head and focus on the mission at hand as the shaky elevator took him all the way to the top of the deep sea dock building. His mission was the stopping of the 'Sons of Liberty' terrorist group, and their apparent leader; a man that referred to himself as 'Solid Snake'.

"I've got to fight the legendary hero from Shadow Moses…" Raiden mused to himself as he pulled off his skull oxygen mask to reveal himself to be a fair-skinned young man with blue eyes and ash-blonde hair that went down to his shoulders, "No wonder they changed my codename from Snake."

The elevator stopped, leaving Raiden on the spacious roof of the connecting building as the sun had just risen, gulls making their calls as they flew around the Big Shell. Amid all of the generators and other building equipment that sat between the safety gates he got a look at just how big the place was. It was like a good-sized town with its sheer size, and he had to traverse it alone.

"There's no way the real Solid Snake is behind this." Raiden said to himself as he began running along the rooftop, jumping generators and getting past all of the fences to get to the main portion of Strut A, "He died two years ago during the Tanker Incident when he blew it up." As he moved he could only thank goodness that there were no guards on the roof in that light, probably off trying to deal with the two SEAL teams that had landed to exfiltrate with the President.

XxX

(Shell 1 – Strut E – Conveyor System Room)

It was a very large room with multiple conveyor belts running through it that would lead to different sections all over the facility as a way of supplying what was needed to the twelve struts set between and divided between the two cores. It had to be an interesting system running through the place to move things around, but now wasn't the time to be curious about such things.

In a dark upper corner of the room, if one were to be paying attention or if the room were better lit one might have caught sight of a human figure sticking to the wall and ceiling wearing a dark green combat suit. A black headband sat on the man's forehead and the black metal on top of it had an engraving of a leaf.

"_Bored Aniki?"_

"I can't really be bored at a time like this. I'm pretty anxious." Naruto replied to his 'sister' over his Codec quietly. There were sentries, but Naruto could throw his voice while speaking so that it wasn't put on blast for everyone to hear unless they were close, and no one was. His eyes had been peering over the guards making sure that they were who he thought he was, and they were. Gurlukovich Mercenaries. Olga's men, 'Oh Olga… you and me have got to talk…'

Maybe he wouldn't have to kill any of them. He had the Solar Gun on him as his only weapon outside of the HF Blade at the moment, but if this lasted past sundown he wouldn't be able to use it too much more. Things would get rather grave at that point and they would need to bring this whole episode to a swift end no matter what it took.

Imagine his surprise when he and Snake had broken in and found the site swarming with Gurlukovich Mercenaries… and even nastier folks that he really wished he wouldn't have been required to run into again.

"_Do you think SEAL Team 10 can get the President out of here? It would help out your mission either way, right?"_

"Hell no they can't. You don't know who's here do you?" Naruto replied with a frown, though it wasn't visible through his facemask that went with his suit, "Besides… let that asshole fry. Remember what he tried to do to us? I don't care about that puppet."

"_So mean…"_

"Being nice stopped at being blackmailed into being a gofer for the Patriots." Naruto said, bitterly remembering just what had occurred years ago. The beginning of his grand misfortune that he had yet to find an answer to, "I don't give a crap about anyone here except for maybe four people, if they're even all here to begin with. You know why I'm doing this Kitty. I'm not anyone's hero."

"_Whatever you say. Stay in touch. If you find something, tell me. Otacon's not running distance support this time for you because he's got his own mission to do. It's all me as you already know. I'm kind of nervous."_

"You'll be fine." Naruto assured her in a caring manner before sighing and deciding that he was burning daylight and needed to get cracking, "Wish me luck." He turned off his Codec and waited for all eyes to stray away from his portion of the supply transport room before he dropped to the floor and left as quickly as possible, not alerting a soul to his presence, 'Where's Snake? I can't just up and call him until I know what he's doing while he's wearing that disguise.'

While it wasn't prudent to interfere yet, Naruto still wanted to observe the attempts of SEAL Team 10 to get the President out and to safety. He hoped Snake had managed to get himself into his position good enough.

XxX

(Shell 1 – Strut B – Transformer Room)

Now having gotten his hand on a M9 model handgun that fired tranquilizing rounds, Raiden was at least officially armed at this point as he skulked through a hallway only to come to a corner, turning it to find the walls covered in blood with corpses littering the corridor.

The dead bodies were the uniformed members of the attacking SEAL Team 10.

Keeping his wits about him, Raiden continued to search around, moving through a doorway to get to the two-leveled room that contained the main machinery that powered the entire Big Shell facility.

Concealing himself from view, Raiden observed three surviving members of whatever had wiped their squad out, skulking forward carefully with their M4s held up and prepared to fire at anything. It was just a shame that they were nothing more than prey in their position.

A single throwing knife flew from the rafters of the room, hitting one man right in the forehead and killing him instantly. Immediately, the other two remaining men opened fire on the fast moving figure they saw above, but their aim was simply not good enough to lock on to their fleet-footed target, "Damn it!"

"I can't hit him!" From behind one of the shooters and landing directly in front of another, the terrible killer cut that one down and disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared, leaving one man all alone, screaming in fear of what he felt was his inevitable death at the hands of a force he couldn't see. He just kept firing his weapon randomly, causing Raiden to have to duck lest he receive a stray bullet wound, "_Alpha Zero. Come in Alpha Zero."_

From the skies, a figure dropped in a kneel directly in front of him, startling him greatly, especially with the bloody survival knife in his right hand. A tall man with long dark hair, a goatee, black pants, and an open trench coat looked up with a predatory look in his eyes as he breathed cold air out of his mouth that misted.

Without warning he instantly sprang back up to his full height just as the SEAL Team member began shooting directly at him. Not a single bullet touched him as he spun like a ballet dancer, edging closer and closer to the soldier before he got close enough to brutally carve him up with his knife; slashing and stabbing, hacking away with abandon.

Like a ghost, the trench coat clad man appeared behind his enemy and grabbed the back of his head before brutally and unnecessarily slitting his throat with the tip of the blade. He seemed to bask in the bloodshed and carnage he had just freely wrought as the blood freely stained him. The SEAL Team radio chattered for someone from Team Alpha to respond, but there was no one left.

Raiden had never seen anything like that in his entire life. Not a single firearm was of any use, and a squad of heavily armed men were cut down without any effort given at all from the man that did it.

He was drawn from his own world back into the current series of events when he heard slurping sounds. Creeping around a few of the electric transformers, against the farthest wall on the lower level of the room Raiden saw the strange man that had killed everyone holding one of the bodies up against the wall as he sucked blood from his neck.

As if he could feel Raiden's gaze on him, the vampiric-looking man turned around and hissed at him, dropping the dead body to the floor. Raiden kept his tranquilizer gun trained directly on his enemy, not flinching a bit at the attempt at intimidation, "What are you?" He asked rhetorically.

The large combat knife was drawn from the man's holster once again before he slowly dragged it across his chest, making a new cut to go with four others that were already there, "Five today…" He said in a Romanian accent, "Or rather, six?" His eyes locked on a rafter that was directly over Raiden's head and he smirked before showing incredible leaping ability, reaching far above the second level in no time flat with a single jump that went even higher, clearing Raiden's head easily.

Raiden knew of the awning above him and planned to shoot the moment the vampire of a man landed on it. He wasn't that easy to fool.

Or maybe he was, because the balcony was not the intended point of landing. Instead he landed directly behind Raiden before he could realize the trick that had been played on him. The cold breath of the blade-happy killer on his neck told him just how badly he had screwed up. It felt like death.

"Get down!"

Raiden quickly adhered to the gruff sounding order and hit the deck just as M4 fire erupted through the gates surrounding the electric transformers there for safety.

But not a single bullet had hit its mark and the creepy man had seemingly vanished into thin air.

With a small nick on his cheek, Raiden looked behind him to see no trace of the man that had almost taken his life. Nothing. He then looked forward and saw yet one more member of the SEAL Team 10 Alpha Squad, clad in a balaclava with his visible sharp eyes peering around attentively. He carefully crept inside, his boots barely making a noise, "…Where is he?" There was that gruff tone again.

Suddenly sensing something, the SEAL member turned up, but too slowly as his enemy had already landed right in front of him and had disarmed him with a deep and violent slash wound to his right arm that went from wrist to elbow. His head was grabbed and he was forced down to his knees as the result of an iron-tight claw hold around his mask-covered skull.

Raiden quickly dove for the misplaced M4 from the captured SEAL and pointed directly at the supernatural warrior that had a grown man at his mercy. He slammed the SEAL against the wall with the use of one hand, holding him off of the ground as something strange seemingly got his attention, "Hmm… strange smell." A second whiff put a look of surprise on the man's face as he dropped the SEAL to the floor, "You smell like-! Are you-? It has to be!"

"Shoot him!" The SEAL cried at Raiden from his place on the ground, "What are you waiting for?"

Once again, that stern order called Raiden into action as he tried emptying the rest of the clip, only to hit nothing due to his target's strange pirouette move that forced him to miss. The man was about to give him the same treatment he gave the last man he killed before his radio stopped him, _"Vamp."_

A woman's voice interrupted him mid-move, causing the man to stop, looking a little put off at having to do so before he responded, "Yeah Queen?"

"_Are you all done cleaning up?"_

"Yes, but wait until I tell you what I found."

"_Something interesting?"_

"I'll tell you in person. Where are you?" So he wasn't able to see it, the SEAL slid a whole new magazine to Raiden who quickly picked it up while Vamp was casually conversing.

He swiftly ejected the last clip while Vamp still spoke and listened as if neither of them were there or were armed, _"In the central unit with the President."_

"Be right there." By the time Raiden looked down to make sure he had put the magazine in correctly and had prepared the gun to fire again, Vamp had vanished by the time he looked back up. Once again without a trace, but this time the opening and closing of a door let him know that there would be no second attempt at taking his life… at least not yet.

With that done, Raiden turned his gun towards the SEAL member that had been trying to pick himself up, "Hold on, I'm not an enemy. Calm down." He sounded way too calm to have a gun pointed at him, but all he did was roll over onto his back to drag himself to a sitting position against one of the transformer gates, "My name is Sn-. My name is Plisken. Iroquois Plisken. Lieutenant Junior Grade."

Pulling off his mask showed Raiden that it was a man with rough shoulder length brown hair, a stubbly beard, and an appearance that made him appear to be in his mid-to-late thirties.

"Are you a Navy SEAL?" Raiden questioned, shaking his gun once for emphasis that he'd better get some information, "How did you get in here?"

"Fast rope descent from a Navy chopper." Plisken responded without missing a beat. He ignored the look of suspicion and skepticism from Raiden in exchange for looking at the young man's gear. That suit… and that pistol of his. It obviously didn't belong to him. That could only mean… "That suit… are you FOXHOUND?"

"That's right."

"FOXHOUND was disbanded years ago." That came as a surprise to Raiden, but he didn't let it show too much on his face. This strange man was not going to get the upper hand on him in any way, "Where were you before then, Delta Force?"

"Army Force XXI Trials."

Ugh… great. Another one of those 'video game' soldiers with no damn field experience. Plisken's rolling eyes didn't miss Raiden's notice and he felt the need to defend his skills, "I've had extensive training. The kind that's indistinguishable from the real thing. Sneaking Mission 60, Weapons 80, Advanced-."

"VR…" Plisken said with a humorless chuckle, "A virtual grunt of the digital age. That's just great. You don't get injured in VR do you? Every year a few soldiers die in field exercises."

"There's pain sensation in VR and even a sense of reality and urgency." Raiden defended, bristling at this man questioning all of the work he had put into proving himself, "That's far more effective than live exercises. The only difference is it isn't actually happening."

That was all just to make sure that the fear was removed from soldiers when it came to real battle situations since they had done it so many times in VR. A trick of the mind, "War as a video game. What better way to raise the ultimate soldier?"

Raiden frowned and just handed Plisken his M4 back as the man accepted it without pause, "So you're saying that VR Training is just mind control?" His Codec then went off, forcing him to turn away to answer it, "Colonel, all of Alpha Team has been wiped out except for a single man."

Plisken stood up slowly from where he was laying on the ground, looking around for something to fix the deep arm wound he had somewhere in the room, "…Kid's wired with nanomachines." He mumbled to himself as he went downstairs to the bottom level of the transformer room.

What a pain in the ass, dealing with the rawest newbie he'd seen since Shadow Moses. Why did he have to be the one that did this kind of thing instead of Naruto? Well, maybe it was because Naruto could go around struts instead of through them with that sticking to flat surfaces crap he could do, thus he didn't need to disguise himself at all. But that wasn't any excuse… in his mind anyway.

He then noticed a dead man nearby in a Navy suit with a broken handcuff attached to his arm, "…A Navy Captain." And he was missing the briefcase that was deemed important enough to be chained to him. That wasn't good. At that point though, feeling woozy from the blood loss he had suffered, 'Plisken' sat down on the stairs with a grunt and fished out a cigarette that he began to smoke, "I must have lost more pints of blood than I thought…"

So that was the Vamp person Naruto had warned him about before they snuck in. The whole family of Dead Cell weirdos were there, and he had a feeling that Naruto would be having a bit of a reunion with more than a few before the day was out.

He noticed that Raiden was still in kind of a stupor from the man he had just had a near-fatal run-in with, "I guarantee you won't see anything like that in VR Training." 'Plisken' joked as he enjoyed his cigarette while Raiden came closer, "That was Vamp, one of the members of Dead Cell. Ex-anti terrorist. Used to show VR Training babies like you what the real thing was like. But when their original leader died in prison they started going out of control; attacking U.S. allies and even civilians as 'accidents'."

"What about their leader, Solid Snake?"

Plisken had to block a bit of a smirk as he kept a serious look on his face, "Solid Snake died two years ago. He was the one that sank the tanker that made this mess possible to begin with, remember?"

Raiden ran a hand through his hair and poked at the stinging wound on his cheek as he listened to the resting Plisken, "But he's a legend."

"Legends are usually bad news." Plisken remarked in return, "There's not a lot of difference between a hero and a madman. They ID'd a portion of his body back then if you remember. Snake is dead. Don't forget that there are still Russian mercenaries skulking around too. Don't worry so much about Dead Cell and 'Solid Snake' just to get yourself plugged by one of them. They're everywhere. Jesus, who the hell briefed you and sent you in here alone kid?"

He didn't expect Raiden to really answer, playing his cards close to the vest as he should have. That was good. At least he wasn't incompetent, and from how he handled that M4 he wasn't shell-shocked at the prospect of having to kill someone. His speed that he showed while doing so was also greater than his own, considerably so.

In a show of extending the olive branch, Plisken held out his pack of cigarettes for Raiden to take on only for the young man to wave him off, "I don't smoke."

Plisken shrugged and tossed the pack to him regardless, forcing him to take them, "Keep it anyway. They may come in handy." He then tossed him a loaded down USP handgun. Naruto would be pissed off that he gave this guy one of his favorite weapons, but he couldn't just send this babe in the woods into the thick of things with nothing but a tranq gun… only a sick motherfucker would have gotten a laugh out of that.

"_Come in Alpha Zero. This is Bravo Zero, currently on the bridge between Struts B and C. The President is-."_ Over the burst transmission of the radio on the person of one of the killed SEALS, the speech was interrupted by the sounds of gunfire, _"Damn it, I can't hit this bitch. It's like some bad dream. Come in Alpha Zero! Anyone at all, come in!"_

"Aren't you going to answer him?" Raiden snapped at Plisken who was still just sitting there resting himself. It struck something in him to just see the guy as cool as a cucumber in the middle of all of this. His own nerves were shot and he had only been there for a hour at most.

Plisken just gave him an annoyed stare and slowly reached for the radio that he had on his own person when a scream erupted through the broadcast from the Bravo Team, and then it went silent, with nothing needing to be said between the two men. Both of the assumed the worst, "The BC connecting bridge… I need a few more minutes." Raiden nodded and felt a little bit bolder now that he was armed with some lethal weaponry as he prepared to leave the room, "Remember my radio frequency. It's 141.80. I'm briefed on the plant's layout and Dead Cell."

"Got it." Raiden told him as he continued to leave, "I'll call you if I need your help. I'm using nanocommunication, but I can patch into your frequency."

Plisken nodded and continued to smoke as Raiden walked upstairs past him, "Hey, what's your name?"

"Raiden."

"What a strange codename."

"Makes up for the boring one my parents gave me."

A joke from the tight-assed newbie? How fun, "Well maybe I'll find out what that is someday." As Raiden left the room, Plisken gave him a half-assed wave over his shoulder, "Good luck kid. You're going to need every bit you can get today."

XxX

(With Naruto – BC Connecting Bridge)

He didn't understand it. He knew Fatman, he knew Chinaman, Old Boy, and Vamp, but the woman was new.

But how could he tell that a random woman was a member of Dead Cell? Well it was kind of easy to put two and two together when he saw her simply standing in front of murderous full automatic gunfire from five Navy SEALs. No cover, nothing.

The woman was of African-American descent with blonde hair that was closer to white. She wore a black legless unitard with a supply belt, a thigh hoster, and combat boots along with a brown trench coat that was open and sat loosely on her shoulders.

Not very telling, but the fact that no matter how many bullets they sent at her, not a single one coming close to hitting her… well that was the most blatant giveaway that one could receive.

Naruto watched all of this from the roof of Strut C and couldn't stop shaking his head, "So that's Colonel Jackson's wife… Helena." Codename: 'Fortune'. Also the daughter of the Marine Commandant Scott Dolph, who died inside of the tanker two years ago. And she was bulletproof. That was just lovely, "Why the fuck didn't I meet her sooner if she could do this?" She'd have fit in with the laundry list of weird shit that everyone in Dead Cell could do.

Directly at her feet sat the unconscious President James Johnson, and though it was cruel, Naruto wished that one of those bullets that veered off-course from Fortune would hit that bastard in the knee or something, just to make him feel it a bit. He deserved worse than that in Naruto's opinion.

"Come on and put me out of my misery." Fortune beckoned the Navy SEALS in a downcast tone of voice at the fact that none of them could seem to deal her any injury or damage.

From behind her once there was a lull in the gunfire, Vamp walked up and casually lifted the President off of the ground with one hand as if he were a ragdoll, his other hand carrying the briefcase he had taken from the dead Navy Captain, "Queen." He greeted Fortune amicably as he strode back past her nonchalantly.

"Don't let them take the President!" The group of a dozen Navy SEALS shifted positions to get a more direct firing path on Fortune, planning on trying to hit her with everything they had from that point forward, "Ready grenades!"

The first man with a grenade launcher fired one directly at Fortune, but it merely rolled to a stop harmlessly at her feet, "A dud?" Hitting her with bullets at a range wasn't working so they moved directly forward towards her side route from the bridge that led to the interior of Shell 1's core where the President had been taken. They'd test how she dodged bullets with the distance significantly shortened since she wasn't shooting back.

"Today is another bad day." Fortune picked up a massive rifle from the ground beside her. A portable rail gun for use by a single person. But those were supposed to be horribly dangerous to use. You had to be as strong as an ox to handle the recoil for one, for another thing the discharge that fired the rounds happened to be damaging to the person using the weapon. But Fortune just charged it up without a care, "Is there anyone here that can give me happiness?"

Without warning she fired a single shot at the location of the Navy SEALS and took out the entire portion of the bridge that they had been on, blowing them apart along with it. It was like a tank's cannon had just gone off. That left the part of the bridge that spanned Struts B and C intact, but it ruined the portion that connected the middle of that bridge to the main core portion of Shell 1.

Fortune fired two more shots for good measure, ignoring the dying screams of the men and watching as one that survived and clutched to a falling portion of bridge fell down into the contaminated water down below where he wouldn't be surfacing.

At least watching the rail gun be used managed to support the electromagnetic release discharge rumor Naruto had heard about it. It just didn't affect Fortune, instead killing more than a few of the many seagulls flying all over the area. Dozens dropped from the sky in the vicinity of where Fortune had been standing when her gun had gone off.

"What the hell man?" Naruto muttered quietly to himself as he watched her walk away into the entrance of the Shell 1 core that was now isolated after the destruction of the walkway that led to it, "They replaced me with Colonel Jackson's wife? And she can do _that_?" No wonder she was called Fortune… he'd be fortunate too if bullets just whizzed right past him and grenades crapped out in his presence.

And she was as cold as ice too. She didn't show a hint of remorse for one of the most violent examples of disposing of enemy troops that he had seen in a long time.

So Dead Cell really did go nuts after Jackson died. Now granted Naruto himself was pissed, but when he saw the man down in Cuba he had more or less resigned himself to the fate of a person that knew they were getting screwed to the wall. Another massive regret of Naruto's life; that he couldn't get the man out.

Naruto sat down on the roof of the strut building and activated his Codec, "Snake you aren't going to believe what I just saw."

"_Is it stranger than a vampire with a knife tearing ten grown men with automatic weapons apart without getting a scratch? Because if it's not I think I've got you beat kid."_

He must have had a run-in with Vamp. He didn't sound hurt, but it was hard to believe that those two had a meeting and one of them didn't get hurt. By one of them he meant Snake, because he had yet to find out what it took to kill Vamp for good, "How about a woman standing out in the open in front of a whole squad of blazing assault rifles without a single bullet touching her. They were bending around her."

"_Damn. You worked in the freakiest unit."_

"What are you doing anyway?" Naruto asked as from his hidden position he was able to see a man his age, maybe a little bit older, with white hair and a black sneaking suit moving across the bridge after marveling at the damage Fortune did to it for a second, "Wait, who is this rube?"

"_You're probably talking about Raiden."_

"Who?"

"_I just met him in here after Vamp murdered everyone else. Says he's in FOXHOUND."_

"So we're working with him?"

"_No way. You're not anyway. I have to keep an eye on him to make sure he's not one of _them._ I'm Iroquois Plisken."_ That was just fine with Naruto. He didn't need any new friends… he wound up being pitted against them somehow when he made them. Though Snake heard Naruto snicker over the line after telling him the name he had given Raiden and responded in kind, _"Why don't you come up with a better alias for yourself if you think mine is so funny?"_

"No, I think I'll just keep looking for Olga. I know she's here. There are too many Gurlukovich Mercenaries here for one of her underlings to be heading this up. Way too many." Maybe the others were there too. They were if he was lucky… or unlucky depending on how things had panned out since he met them in Russia last year. Why the hell were they there?

What was the over/under that he would have to fight at least one?

"_*sigh* I seriously don't think that's a good idea. Even if you can dodge Dead Cell, she's gonna try to kill you."_

"If she finds out I'm here sneaking around she'll get pissed off that I'm here and hiding from her and she'll try to kill me anyway. At least I can get a word in edgewise this way if I find her instead of the other way around."

Ever since Naruto had told Snake about Olga ultimatum to either kill him or engage in a mission for the Patriots to keep her baby safe, Snake had been trying to steer Naruto away from trying to get some kind of a meet with the woman. There was no way that she was going to talk to him. He was undoubtedly the last person walking the face of the planet that she wished to see.

But he was a grown man. He could make his own decisions and his morals and code of personal conduct happened to differ greatly from Snake's own. He valued the people he deemed close to him greatly, so much so that he didn't seem to care about himself as long as the well-being of his friends could be assured.

Loyalty like that was rare for soldiers like them that didn't deal with comrades that they were expected to fight with, live with, and see every day. Most of the time people were seen as commodities, just folks that they worked with when it was needed. Not really as friends that one would run to at the drop of a hat if it was needed of them.

That was because it usually got men like them killed.

Snake had a sick and uneasy feeling in his stomach about it when he thought about it all regarding Naruto and Olga, but he wanted to chalk that up to just being paranoid. He couldn't try to take Naruto down and keep him out of the proceedings by force so that the worst didn't come to pass, he needed him far too much to help deal with Dead Cell, and now with this unknown Raiden commodity thrown into the mix having a trustworthy partner in the field was more important than ever.

"_Right… well I'm going to go keep an eye on the Raiden guy. I'm not sure how on the level he is."_

"Fine, go babysit." Naruto told him as his eyes began suspiciously peering around. From where he was on top of Strut C he could see far and wide. The place was teeming with guards on all of the connecting bridges with the exception of the one that Fortune had just partially lain to waste.

No one had a glimpse of him, this he knew because there was no one shooting at him and no alerts had been raised, but why did he feel like there were a pair of eyes right on him. It made him itch just thinking about it.

To hell with it. He still had much work to do. They were there for a real reason; more specifically the hard intelligence they had dug up on a brand new Metal Gear, bigger than all of the others that had come before it if the rumblings were anything to go by. It was apparently being built there at Big Shell, they just had to find it first.

With that in mind, Naruto made to leave the roof as he didn't feel too secure any longer despite his position out of clear sight of anyone. Taking note of the guard patterns, Naruto timed a full sprint down the side of the Strut C building, 'While Snake plays around with the new guy to see if he can trust him, I'm heading to Shell 2.'

The reason being, he didn't really want to risk having to dance with Fortune or Vamp. If Vamp hadn't slacked off in his training that meant he was still just as fast as him, and from what he had seen weapons didn't seem to work on Fortune at all from a distance. That rail gun she had wasn't a joke either. He wasn't risking any kind of confrontation with those two; the ones he happened to be the most wary of by far, without proper preparation.

He needed to know more on the situation first. What was the endgame supposed to be? What were Dead Cell and the Gurlukovich Mercenaries really there to do? That was what he was going to go find out, one way or another.

XxX

(Shell 2 – Core Rooftop)

Shell 2 was where the vast majority of the treatment being done to the contaminated water took place within, along the lower levels where the ocean covered the support areas of the struts that went underwater.

On the roof however it was home to a variety of large vats that elevated off of the surface, vats that housed many of the chemicals that were used to treat the ocean water that the facility existed to clean.

Concealed well on top of one of them, with the clearest view of anyone else over the entire Big Shell, a figure was lying down observing Naruto break out in his sprint from the top of Strut C over at Shell 1, all the way to underneath the next connecting bridge where he stuck to the underside and continued his run from there. Impressive, if she didn't already know that he could do such a thing.

But his abilities didn't happen to be the thing taking up residence in the sniping observer's eyes, "No, no, no, no, no… why are you here?" Sniper Wolf whispered in a Middle Eastern accent from her hiding place, "This is not good at all. Damn you little probie."

What the fuck was he doing there? There was no way that he knew that Olga had accepted a mission from the former President of the United States last year unless he had precognitive abilities, and she knew for a fact that Naruto was no psychic… as if that mattered.

They told him to stay away. No good could come of him being there, damn him and his bleeding heart. Why couldn't he be a ruthless person out for himself for once?

She lowered her sniper rifle and got up to leave and find either Johnny or Meryl, preferably both, before someone else found out he was there, someone that wouldn't keep that little bit of information to themselves. Naruto's being hard-headed was going to come back and bite himself in the ass, and it was probably going to bring down more than just him too.

* * *

><p><strong>Bwaaah. Chapter complete. Sorry all for taking a fortnight to update this one, but in addition to the real world trials and tribulations I've been facing, I've been finding interest in other things that kept delaying me from going forward with this.<strong>

**So yeah, Big Shell's in effect. Stuff's going on, Raiden is in play, Vamp's weird.**

**Let's do it.**

**Kenchi out.**


	25. The Mark of a Soldier

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Independence Day has long since come and gone, and no big ass alien ship blew up the White House to my knowledge. I'm kind of disappointed, because if there was anyone that could go up in there and 'Will Smith' that mother-mother up it would have been me. I've got heart.

Ooh, or a giant metal spider that wants to kidnap President Ulysses S. Grant. I'd love to see if I could fight one of those. Kinda like a Metal Gear without the nukes or the guns… or anything that makes a Metal Gear a Metal Gear.

**Chapter 25: The Mark of a Soldier**

* * *

><p>(April 29, 2009 – 20 Miles off of the Shore of Manhattan – Big Shell Offshore Cleanup Facility – Shell 1 – Strut C)<p>

Raiden was not having a good first mission under FOXHOUND. After seeing a man that seemed to be able to dance around gunfire like it was coming at him in slow-motion, and seeing a woman that rendered all bullets and explosives around her useless he felt more like he was in some kind of monster movie than a military operation.

From what he had seen, the current strut he was in was deserted, but he couldn't help but feel like there was someone watching him at all times. He was thoroughly on the cusp of freaking out, but only the fact that his girlfriend was monitoring his Codec calls kept him from reporting this to the Colonel. He didn't need that drama.

His USP pistol given to him by Pliskin was held up at the ready for whatever awaited him around the next corner, and as he crept into the kitchen of a mess hall he was glad he had a lethal weapon instead of the tranquilizer gun that he had entered with as he had caught someone off-guard, and it was hard to hold someone up at gunpoint with a tranq as the threat.

The sound of the automatic door shutting got the attention of a black man crouching down near the oven, "Freeze!" Raiden said, before he could even make a real move. It was a bald older man with a mustache and dark sunken eyes wearing a New York City police jacket. On top of the stove was a toolbox that the man put his hands towards to help him stand up, "You a cop?"

"Don't shoot." The older man said as he stayed still, "I'm not NYPD, I came in with the Bravo Team. Who are you? And what happened to SEAL Team 10?"

"They're dead." Raiden stated grimly. He was never going to forget the sight of Fortune taking those men down for the rest of his life. If you had asked him what outlandish things he would see today when he woke up to infiltrate the Big Shell that morning, he would never have gone that far up the weird scale. Not even close.

"All of them? That's bad." The old man sounded distraught as he slowly started to stand up, grabbing a nearby cane for support.

Having already been sufficiently freaked out enough for a lifetime already that day, Raiden's nerves hackled at the sight of the unknown entity beginning to stand up, "Did I tell you you could move?" He then swung his gun to the side at the presence of another person entering from the dining area of the mess hall.

"It's alright, he's one of the good guys." Pliskin nonchalantly strolled in, barely regarding Raiden with a glance despite the fact that he was pointing a gun at him, "Don't go pointing that thing everywhere kid." Having been chided in a manner by the older soldier, Raiden lowered his gun in an embarrassed manner, "What's your name?" He asked the old man.

"Peter." The man said as he finished standing up, using his cane to support what seemed to be an injured leg, "Peter Stillman."

"Lecturer at NAVSCOLEOD (Naval School of Explosive Ordinance Disposal) Indian Head." An impressed Pliskin said, looking over at the old man with a small smile, "Also a consultant for the NYPD bomb squad."

Stillman just shook his head as he heard Pliskin rattle off his past titles, "Just a poor old man who got dragged along for this picnic." He hobbled around the kitchen with his cane, over to Pliskin's side since that weird young man with the gun had just recently been pointing it at him and Pliskin was the one that got him to put it down, "I can't keep up with everybody as you can see. A famous church got wiped off the map because of me. All I lost was this leg."

Raiden put his gun away at that and nodded as he had fulfilled his next portion of orders to find the bomb disposal expert that had come in with the SEAL Team, "So you're the bomb disposal guy?"

Plisken scoffed in amusement at Raiden and put a hand on Stillman's shoulder, "Kid this is THE bomb disposal guy. Open any explosives disposal textbook and you'll see his name."

"Why'd they bring him out of retirement for this?" Raiden wondered aloud. For as good as he was, the leg that he was dragging around made him quite the hindrance for this kind of thing.

At Raiden's query, Stillman frowned deeply, "Because the terrorist group here includes one of my students. The 'Emperor of Explosives' Fatman. He built an atomic bomb when he was only ten. I created him in a sense. I was supposed to supervise the bomb disposal, but it looks like it was taken care of before I had my turn. I'm pretty rusty."

"I wouldn't say that." Pliskin said a bit unsurely, "There are at least two people who came claim to be experts at bomb disposal." He left it a bit more ambiguously than anyone else would have liked, but Raiden knew full well that he wasn't the one that was an expert at such a thing.

Stillman looked between the two strange men with a raised eyebrow, "Are you two with SEAL Team 10? I didn't see you at the mission briefing."

Now there was a problem. Raiden couldn't just go around letting people know that he was with FOXHOUND, and Pliskin had his own problems. Still though, the latter was quick-witted enough to salvage the situation, "Oh, we're with another squad. My name is Pliskin, Lieutenant Junior Grade. Honored to meet you sir."

He extended his hand to Stillman to shake, but he simply stared at it before getting down to business. No formalities, "Mr. Pliskin, do you have any experience with explosives disposal?"

"Don't worry about me." Pliskin assured him as he shot a thumb over in Raiden's direction, "And he looks young, but he can do it. We need more manpower though."

Raiden was about to interject, but he felt like the kid in the room while the grownups were talking and backed down as he remembered that he was supposed to carry out his mission as subtly as possible. Still though, he had been noticed by Stillman in the process, "What's your name?"

"Raiden." He said plainly. He could shell out a codename. That was what it was meant for anyway, something he could tell others to identify him without really identifying him, "Were there any other survivors from the attack?"

Stillman nodded, "There was an engineer with me. A skinny guy with glasses that went in with us, but I haven't seen him since the skirmish. They all said he was the security systems architect for the Big Shell."

"Why take a civilian along?"

"Everything in this structure is computer controlled. He was supposed to get us past all of the security measures. And he had official orders with him."

Due to their conversation, no one noticed the momentary smirk that appeared on Pliskin's face at the topic of the systems architect they were talking about, "We'll leave that for later. Right now we need to figure out how to deal with all of the bombs."

"But there's no one left from the SEAL's EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) squad." Raiden pointed out. He had just seen every last SEAL with the exception of Pliskin die from either Vamp or Fortune in a matter of seconds.

"That just means that we'll have to do it ourselves." Pliskin said, seemingly nonplussed at the prospect of handling explosives.

Raiden however didn't feel the same way, "But I've never defused a bomb before." Before he could continue arguing his point, his Codec went off, "Ah, hold on a sec."

Plisken rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall to wait, "Off to confer with the CO again?"

Ignoring the remark, Raiden put a hand to his ear to listen better and waited for the Colonel to speak, _"Glad to hear Stillman is safe. Assist him in any way possible to clear the C4 from Big Shell."_

"Colonel, you know I've never been trained in bomb disposal."

"_It's all right. The man you're working with is the best in the field. All you have to do is follow his directions. You will of course keep your identity and your mission objectives to yourself. You need to be fast as well. The enemy may retaliate for the failed assault. Get those C4s neutralized now."_

Why was everyone trying to get him to play with high-explosives today? He wasn't trained to do it, "Colonel, I'm not qualified for bomb disposal."

At first there was no response, but then the voice of a woman familiar to him came through, _"Jack, it's me. You can do this. Trust me."_

"Rose?" Before he could even really speak with his girlfriend again it cut out and back to the Colonel who was back to business and apparently had no concept of letting him have a damn personal moment.

"_You haven't had bomb disposal training per se in VR, but you're more than capable of handling C4."_

"_You're up for this. You know that."_

Pliskin had gotten sick of the conversation that he couldn't hear going on and decided to put an end to it, "How about it kid? Are the results in yet?"

By that time, Stillman had prepared something for the two of them to assist in dealing with Fatman's explosives, "There's no need to think about this so much. You won't actually be dismantling the bomb. That's not for amateurs. We're just going to go with a temporary freezing measure." On the center counter of the kitchen he set down two sensing devices and two cans of spray, "He also has a signature. He adds a touch of his own cologne to every bomb he builds."

"Something you taught him?" Pliskin asked with a shake of his head. He already knew of Fatman from Naruto.

"No, that's his own quirk." Stillman began to reminisce a bit, "He wouldn't work by any rules except his own, and he followed them like a religion. And common sense wasn't one of his strong points. I thought I taught him everything I knew. I have no children of my own, and I… I thought I found a son in him. He had the right stuff you know? There's something unusual about an ability like that. Even at Indian Head he got special treatment. Maybe that's what started all of this. But I didn't teach him the most important thing I had to tell him; that there are some things you have to pass on. The trick is to know which one. All I taught him were skills and now I have to stop him from using them to destroy us all."

"Right." Plisken said as he picked up a sensor and a can of freezing spray, "To take down a place this big there should be at least one set of explosives somewhere on each Strut. That's the only way to take down a place this size. Six Struts on Shell 1, another six on Shell 2, that makes twelve in all at least." He pocketed his equipment and started making his way out, "Kid this palce is all yours. I'll take Shell 2. Stillman, stay here. You'll only slow us down with that leg of yours. There's a war going on out there."

"Yeah, just let us handle the grunt work." Raiden interjected in support of Pliskin's viewpoint, "You can tell us what to do over the radio like in the original plan.

Stillman hobbled over to a stool and sat down on it in acceptance of the request of his 'comrades', "Fine. I'll instruct you from here. Good luck because this one's going to be dangerous."

"Good luck kid." Pliskin said, patting Raiden on the back as he left the mess hall, "Semper fi."

With that he left Raiden and Stillman alone. The old bomb disposal expert just stared at the door that Pliskin had used to leave with a suspicious look on his face, "That man's no SEAL. I don't even think he's a Navy man. Too many things don't add up."

"Do you think he's one of the terrorists then?" Raiden asked, ready to go and fight Pliskin for some answers if need be. Even if the man barely took him seriously, that didn't mean that he couldn't win.

"No, if there's someone to suspect on that front I'd put my money on you." Raiden looked a bit flustered at being put on the spot, but Stillman let him off the hook, "Just take care of those bombs for now. I've got a feeling this whole day's going to get worse before it gets better, even if you diffuse them."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Shell 1 – Strut E - Naruto: Age 22)

Mercs, mercs, mercs.

There were _so_ many Gurlukovich Mercenaries in the Big Shell facility. Shell 1 by itself had more jerks waddling around in it than he had ever seen in one place before. The first question Naruto had as he snuck around was 'why weren't they focused as heavily in Shell 2 from what he had seen?' Maybe because there wasn't a damn thing there that needed to be protected.

Which made him more suspicious than ever. Years of looking over your shoulder and PTSD generated night terrors to keep one from sleeping soundly would do that it seemed. Places that didn't have anything to protect usually wound up having something worth posting guards around there for.

Bah, he didn't care to be quite honest. Let Snake worry about the overwhelming, grandstanding plot to harm the country. Naruto would get in on that after he handled his own reason for coming to Big Shell to interfere with today's events. He needed to find Olga, he needed to get her alone, he needed to find out how to help her and help his friends to keep them from getting themselves destroyed.

What in the world was he to do? He needed to make contact with one of his friends, but how would he get to any of them with any semblance of privacy?

It took an entire trip through the places in Shell 1 minus the heavily guarded core building of it before it came to him how to run into one of his friends.

…And he headed to the nearest bathroom.

Luck smiled on him apparently when a familiar set of pained groans entered the facilities and a regularly clothed Gurlukovich Mercenary quickly entered one of the stalls, slamming the door behind him and giving no time to check his surroundings. If the new arrival had, they might have noticed that someone had been hiding up in the ceiling corner of the restroom as he entered.

Naruto waited in the same place for well over ten minutes, though he wished that he had found a place to hide outside. He _still_ suffered from chronic stomach problems? Go to a doctor man.

Eventually though, Naruto got tired of hearing sounds of toilet relief and other gross sounds. That was as private as he was going to get with that person. No one that knew better would hang around a damn bathroom with-, "Johnny."

"Huh!" Johnny said in pained annoyance from inside of the stall, "Who's out there? There's another stall over there and the urinals are open too. Leave me alone!"

"No, it's me Johnny." Naruto said again with a smirk on his face despite himself. There was some humor to be found in the situation. They had first met under similar circumstances after all, "You seriously need to take some medicine to keep that shit in check." Literally.

All of a sudden, metal clattering came from the stall from an alarmed Johnny who was finally aware of just what the score was, "B-Boss? What the hell are you doing here? Wolf told us she saw you, go away!" He said in a hissing whisper.

"Nice to see you too." Naruto muttered with a frown, dropping down from the ceiling corner to walk closer to the bathroom stalls where he leaned against the side, "No, I'm not going anywhere. Not until I figure out what the hell you guys are doing here and not until I get Olga to ferry her mercenaries off of this tin can."

Silence came from inside until Johnny finally spoke up, "…I can't let you do that Boss. Miss Olga has a reason for being here, and I really can't let you screw it up. It'll be better to just let it go. Just leave before bad things happen."

"Bad things'll happen whether I'm here or not." Naruto replied, "At least if I'm here I can say that I tried to stop it and help the people I care about. You know; damage control."

"There isn't enough damage control in the world that'll stop this one Boss." Johnny said as he flushed the toilet inside of his stall, "I only get like this when I'm nervous. Well when Wolf radioed me and Meryl and told us you were here, that unsettled my stomach. I don't like this."

"I don't like it either. You know that feeling that you get when you can feel a thunderstorm in the atmosphere? It sucks." He then looked down and saw that Johnny had slid him a key card. A high level key card. _The_ highest level, "Johnny…" Naruto started to say until he was cut off.

"Don't say anything Boss." Johnny told him as he could be heard buckling his pants for a moment before the stall door swung open, "I know by now that when you get something in your head someone would have to kill you to stop you. If that's the way things are I might as well help you as much as I can. I only have one that high because of Wolf, Meryl, and Miss Olga… I'm not stationed anywhere that I actually need it."

That was a big gamble, especially with all of the people there. With the Dead Cell crazies, and everything else going on to boot?

Naruto picked it up off of the ground and raised an eyebrow in his clumsy yet well-meaning ally's direction, "Are you sure about this? If the wrong people find out that I've got your card-."

"Only a few people know that we're even friends Boss." Johnny said as he emerged from the stall tucking his clothing into place properly as he held his AN-94, "Besides, if anyone asks what happened to my card I'll just say that it fell in the toilet." He finished jokingly before stopping to take a good look at Naruto, "…You look so tired."

Naruto just grunted in return, not confirming or denying the statement, "I can't tell what you look like right now because you're always wearing that damn mask." He looked at the clearance of the card and noted that Johnny had placed his radio frequency on the back of it on a piece of tape, "I guess I'll call you if something's up. But what's Olga's frequency?"

"Do you really want to let her know that you're here with a random call when you haven't called her one single time in two years?"

"Good point. I thought you said you were bad with women."

"Not when they're already mad I'm not. I'm experienced at that. I'm just not very good at keeping them from getting angry in the first place."

"Right." With that Naruto tucked the card away into his equipment and gave Johnny a pat on the shoulder before heading out, "Here's hoping no one shoots me when they finally see me." He said as he ambled out of the bathroom to continue looking around for more of his friends, "Later."

Johnny just nodded before pointing in a direction, "Oh, if you want to find someone the easiest person to look for might be Meryl. She's heading up the patrols in Shell 2… Strut H I think." There wasn't an answer and when Johnny checked outside of the bathroom there was no sign of Naruto anywhere, "I hate it when he does that." He said with a sigh before looking around and pulling out his radio, "…I just saw him. He's going Shell 2 way again." He reported.

"_That's… not good."_ Sniper Wolf said in return over her radio, _"Call him and tell him to come back. The way he crosses the bridges I can't deter him with sniping. My bullets are too high-caliber to ricochet off of that kind of metal."_

Johnny was prepared to do just that before he remembered something important. The blush on his face couldn't be seen underneath his balaclava mask, "I uh, I kind of forgot to ask him for his new Codec frequency and just gave him radio frequency instead."

"_Johnny!"_

"I was in the bathroom and I was scared, I forgot!" Johnny reasoned in return. Didn't anyone else ever screw up? It happened to him all of the time. Even if Wolf told him and Meryl that Naruto was there it was terrifying to come face-to-face with the man while on the damn toilet, "What's the big deal anyway? Miss Olga isn't even in that Shell. She's in this one, in the core building to boot! They're nowhere near each other!"

Sniper Wolf only had one thing to say that explained it, _"Old Boy and the Fallschirmjäger were commanded to patrol Shell 2."_

XxX

(Some Time Later – Shell 2 – Strut J)

"What?" Naruto asked quietly, yet his voice was stunned, "Bombs?"

Naruto had somehow noticed Snake while moving through Shell 2… because he saw a cardboard box somewhere it had no business being. A Solid Snake classic that for some reason still held up to this day when the man needed to hide himself in a screwball situation.

From there Snake had given Naruto some messed up news that explosives were planted all over the Big Shell. With someone like Fatman being on the scene it was to be somewhat expected that bombs were set somewhere, so it wasn't surprising but it was still screwed up.

"Heard it from the best bomb disposal expert around." Snake said in confirmation, "He trained Fatman too, so if anyone would know it would be him. I found all of the ones with Fatman's traces, but I'm here looking for a bigger set somewhere in this Shell."

A grimace came to Naruto's face at the thought of having to tinker with a bomb, especially one made by Fatman, "I'm not really much for bomb disposal. I mean, I know enough to get around if I have to, but other than that…" He said, trailing off tellingly.

Snake just waved him off, "Don't worry about it. I'm doing this Shell while the Raiden kid is doing the other. We've got this." His looks then turned thoughtful, "But the bombs aren't anywhere important so far. They've all been places like in bathrooms, or hidden in storage closets. Stuff like that."

From his own personal experience, Naruto knew that Fatman had a thing for planting weak explosives in weird places. Everybody in Dead Cell had to check their crap routinely to make sure that Fatman hadn't stashed a bomb in their bags or under their beds… or under the table in the common area, "Those aren't the real ones. That's just him being a dick." He knew the things that Dead Cell had been meant to do, terrorist things, "Check somewhere structural."

Like Snake knew anything structural about facilities like this. The whole damn thing seemed precarious and unstable to him, so how could he tell the difference? Damn it, why did Otacon have to have his own crap to deal with during the mission for the time being?

"Call Catherine." Naruto griped when he could tell what the scowl on Snake's face was implying, "She's got the stolen blueprints to Big Shell on her computer just the same as Otacon so get the info from her." He hoped he wasn't that grouchy when he was Snake's age… which was just thirty-seven by the way.

Snake sincerely disliked the fact that Naruto's civilian 'sister' had been brought into the fold of Philanthropy, but there had been no alternative, and she really wasn't that bad. Still though, he didn't like untrained comm. specialists handling his stuff. The fact that she was the daughter of the person that partially trained he and Naruto was the only connection to the military she really had.

"I'll keep that in mind." Snake said, "I'll just call Peter Stillman and see what he says to do. Who'd know more about bombs and bomb disposal than an expert?"

"Whatever." Naruto said, before making a hand motion as the two split off, "Don't be tight-lipped if you get into trouble." Snake let out a grunt in reply, but Naruto already knew that the man wouldn't call if he needed the help. Not unless the entire mission rode on something getting done or being prevented from happening.

Special Forces guys…

He had his own thing to do anyway. Snake could go around disarming C4 explosives. He didn't need his help for something like that, even if it was someone like Fatman that planted them. No, now there was someone that needed to be located.

And per Johnny's instructions Naruto made his way to the appropriate strut of Shell 2 in order to locate her. As he walked carefully through the halls, ready to react to any sound or any unfamiliar sense that came his way, he had to again bring up the fact that he had no clue why Shell 2 was as desolate as it was.

Strut H was a storage building, but nothing that Naruto could use sat within. It wasn't supposed to be a military facility. Granted the terrorists that had taken over the Big Shell had brought some of their own ammo and equipment, they didn't keep it there. It was really just chemicals and machinery used to treat the ocean water kept in there.

Yeah, The Patriots really had the money to waste on simple appearances if they dished out the money to pay for all of this working crap. But if they had the money to waste on sinking a full tanker just to frame he and Snake they had enough money for anything. No wonder the national economy was shit. They controlled the United States down to the letter so they obviously used federal money to front all of that cover-up stuff.

The high shelves containing metal barrels and metal box containers served as Naruto's home to hide from anyone in the large and cramped warehouse that served to be like a labyrinth if one didn't have his ability to 'rise above' the shelves like him. But it was an unnecessary precaution. The only soldiers he saw in there reported to one person on… something that he could barely hear.

Something about 'estimated to be ready in several hours', but he could barely hear from where he was before he managed to get closer. By the time he did so, they were saluting the lone person that they had been reporting to, "Ma'am, the commander wishes to see you A.S.A.P., though she didn't tell us why."

"That's fine." Such a stern voice from a young woman his age with neck-length red hair. Well she was definitely different from the last time he saw her in the field. Far more confident, but it was probably because after living through what she had already survived would make anything else seem easy to handle, "Tell her that I'll be with her after our relief for this patrol finishes the rotation."

The soldiers that had informed her of her next set of orders snapped off a salute and quickly hustled out of the warehouse, leaving her alone. With a sigh she walked over to a metal chair that she had set up hours ago as the warehouse had been the center point of the patrol and sat down, crossing one leg over the other.

Naruto slowly climbed down the shelves directly behind her doing his best Spiderman impression until apparently his presence was familiar enough to the woman beneath him that she looked directly up and saw him hovering overhead. She had a look of shock on her face at the sight of the blonde man in his dark green operational gear before it morphed to one of annoyance, "Ugh, really?"

"Oh, sorry Meryl." Naruto remarked sarcastically in return, "I'll just walk around all of the shelves and run myself into six dead-ends while there are soldiers in here patrolling, instead of just going over the tops of them. What the hell do you mean 'really'? You expected me to go around?"

It was quite a sight to see a woman glaring up at a blonde ninja-looking man who was hanging off of a shelf upside down, returning it just as heatedly. If anyone had been there to see it of course.

Eventually Naruto dropped down and landed on the ground, crouching from a silent flip. Meryl rolled her eyes at the fact that Naruto was still a bit of a showoff, but from what she had seen of her 'comrades' on this mission he wasn't the only person she knew that had a flair for the dramatic by far.

Naruto stood back up and turned to face her, scrutinizing her appearance the way he had done so for all of his friends he hadn't seen in a while. She wore a dark combat suit that was a bit snug on her, but seemed to be armored in vital places, with a high collar around the back of her neck. On her arms she had sleeves that extended from her hands to her elbows and she had a full supply belt around her waist with all of her ammunition and guns.

She still used that Desert Eagle of hers, and if she hadn't gotten killed by then she must have known how to pull her shots with it by now. She even had another one with an extended barrel and a scope on it, something that made Naruto's eye twitch.

"I thought I told you a million times to drop that hand cannon." Naruto muttered distastefully at such a noisy weapon. Then again, Meryl wasn't about using stealth and working alone the way he had to most of the time.

"I thought I told you to stay away." With the last three syllables of her sentence, Meryl poked Naruto squarely in the middle of the chest sternly before her features softened and she pulled him into a hug, "Damn it, it's good to see you alive though."

For better or worse Naruto was something of her mentor despite being the same age (she'd never admit that to his or anyone else's face though), and during Shadow Moses they had wound up forming a strong friendship. Having him disappear twice off of the face of the planet for the better part of three years did make her uneasy.

Seeing him there, even under the current circumstances set her stomach a bit easier than it had been when he came up as a topic in the past. At least at this point she could confirm that he was alive and kicking.

"You too." Naruto returned the hug and idly took note of how much physically stronger she felt than when they had first met. Pulling back, he also noted how that damn suit of her accentuated some of her more feminine assets, "You look really good you know. Gunmetal is definitely your color."

He took a punch to the shoulder for that compliment though, "Eyes off my tits you womanizing-… ugh. You're so hardheaded." It was clear he was just trying to lighten the mood, but there wasn't much of one to lighten, "…It's bad Naruto. It's really bad. This is so screwed up."

"What?"

"Everything!" Meryl exclaimed suddenly, "Olga's baby is tied up in all of this somehow. You remember the deal with that right?"

How could he forget? Either Olga accomplishes some big mystery mission or brings about his death, otherwise her child dies. But who in God's name was pulling the strings to dictate that _this_ was the mission that was intended?

"So you have to get what the leader that's calling himself Solid Snake wants, or the kid doesn't make it." That had to be the mission. It was completely over-encompassing in regards to anything else. What could possibly be a bigger mission than this? "So does that mean that the guy running this thing is one of The Pat-?"

"We don't know." Meryl grumbled. She felt like flinging her chair straight through something, but she had to keep playing it straight, "And he's definitely not Solid Snake, that's just the alias he's using until he gets what he wants and it doesn't matter anymore. The codename he used until this was Solidus Snake."

"Original." Naruto deadpanned. What was with all of the fucking snake-related names? Didn't anyone have any inventiveness in them anymore? If he had ever gotten to pick his own codename… oh man that would have been really something. He could only imagine.

Apparently Meryl felt the same way from her distaste in how she spoke of the ringleader of the entire thing, "I know, right? But we know him better as something else. This guy is George Sears, the last President until Shadow Moses happened."

That guy again. First in France, then again in Sierra Leone, and finally right back to New York City. Espionage was one thing, but this had strayed over into the realm of the absurd a long time ago, "…I really hate my government."

"I thought you'd didn't claim being American."

"Fine, I hate _your_ government then." While this wasn't the President that Naruto wanted to put a bullet or a blade into, because Johnson held that position quite firmly, Sears was quickly moving his way to the top of the list, "So if this fails it all goes to hell. What the fuck does he want?"

And was it something that could be afforded to be given?

Meryl was quick to answer, "A newly developed kind of Metal Gear, something aquatic, I don't know much more about it. Naruto this whole place is a front for its development in secret." Putting the new weapon of mass destruction and worldwide panic into the hands of another lunatic? Damn it, "Only he, Ocelot, and Olga know anything about it though. She's trying to keep us as far away as she can, for our safety or… I don't know."

Ocelot. He was there. Great. Someone else whose neck he wanted to break. What was this, a greatest hits reunion?

The conversation was cut short when the large doors of the warehouse were thrown open and orders were barked out in German as the boot steps of troops marched in. Both Naruto and Meryl turned to each other with looks of panic on their faces, for different reasons.

"Damn it, my shift commanding the regulars is over." Meryl was only still there until all of her men were relieved by their replacement guards, who were on their way inside of the warehouse right then, "You've got to go Naruto. This is not good."

Naruto knew that full well, because he knew the enemy a bit more personally after having worked with them himself before, "Old Boy and the Fallschirmjäger?"

Instead of letting him wait until it was too late, Meryl shoved Naruto off towards the back exit, "Just go! We'll talk later!"

"145.29." That was all Naruto said before quickly vacating the warehouse through the back. He wasn't afraid to fight those guys, not at all, but getting seen by them with Meryl with the two of them not trying to kill each other would simply not work out.

Still as fast as ever, Naruto was able to escape just before the area became flooded with clean-shaven soldiers dressed in plain grey uniforms and carrying Belgian FAL rifles that lined up awaiting their leader.

The stillness of the room gave way to slow, plodding footsteps that revealed a small and hunched old man with wispy white hair and a stern expression wearing an old German officer uniform from the WWII era. His chest was adorned with metals and on his person he kept quite outdated equipment, most notably the German semi-automatic rifle the Gewehr 43 on his back.

He marched up past his similarly appearing soldiers who stood in obedient attention as he moved up closer to Meryl who stood taller than the old man, "Come to take command of the Shell from me?"

"Of course." Old Boy said with his thick German accent, "With the Seal Teams dealt with and with the intruder that King is so certain that we have, it is only right for a little more discipline to be added to the proceedings don't you think? My men will shoot to kill first and foremost."

Ah, Old Boy of course had a longstanding problem with Russians, and that was what the Gurlukovich Mercenaries were completely comprised of. It was an old World War II and Soviet Union occupation thing. Old people held serious grudges like that, even though he got himself out of Germany as quickly as possible after that war.

Old Boy took a slow walk around Meryl, circling her as he observed her, "Such a beautiful girl, working against her home country. How did you ever fall in with this lot to begin with? After Shadow Moses you should have been perceived as a hero, yes?"

She could see the smirk on his face and spoke back bitingly, "I guess it's the same way that Dead Cell almost wound up liquidated six months ago…" Patriots didn't want them and proceeded to do something about them.

"So it's Rapture's fault?" Old Boy said, speaking Naruto's codename as if it were something poisonous, "Did his rogue actions do you harm the way that they did Dead Cell's reputation harm? Did they get your CO killed the way that Dead Cell's commanding officer was thrown away to die in prison for nothing? Did they put enough scrutiny on your group that eventually framing you as an excuse to kill you off seemed feasible?" He seemed to be getting angrier and angrier as he spoke and his thin hair started flipping about.

Old Boy then calmed back down and smoothed his hair into place once more for appearances sake.

"If that is not what you were implying…" Old Boy concluded sharply, "…Then our paths have nothing in common. I hope that boy is cursed blind, deaf, and dumb." With that he brushed past Meryl and started barking commands to the remaining soldiers in his personal unit for how their shift was to go.

Meryl let out a scoff at the crotchety old man and strode past him and his group of handpicked soldiers on her own way out, "Well maybe you'll get lucky enough to get a chance to do that to him yourself. That is if you don't believe he's dead the way it was reported back in 2007."

"Vermin like Rapture are oftentimes hard to kill, and they often know when to abandon sinking ships. So no; no one amongst us believes he is dead, and neither should you."

"Don't worry, I don't." That was the last thought that Meryl left him with as her voice echoed through the warehouse prior to her leaving.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Shell 2 – Strut H 2nd Floor Basement)

"_Snake, you need to stop looking right now and get the hell out of Shell 2 altogether."_

Damn girl chattering in his ear. Why did Otacon have to be on-site and leave him with Naruto's 'sister' running distance support? She was a good girl and knew herself, but she seriously had little place anywhere near a battlefield, "I can't. I'm supposed to be looking around the bottom of Strut H. Pete's suspicious that there's something down here."

Instead of hearing Catherine chiding him to leave, Naruto's voice came over Snake's Codec, _"Grr… that's a structural spot. We can't just leave it alone if there could be bombs there."_ Sielnce reigned for a moment, _"Fine. Be careful and search. I think I'm gonna have to take some of the heat off of you, because Old Boy's Fallschirmjäger are in the Shell in force and they'll definitely find you if you're stuck searching for bombs."_

Snake then looked around at his position. It was lower floor of the warehouse Strut H where there was more open space and the entirety of what was stored down there was heavy industry equipment lining the walls with the open floor meant to be a safe place to take things down. No place to hide. Any idiot could locate anyone in there just by checking corners.

Yeah he was going to need that diversion.

"…If you're not going to get yourself killed doing it feel free to take some of the heat off of me kid."

"_Right. Kitty, give me a good place to redirect guys away from Strut H. I need to give Snake some privacy to search."_

"_One sec."_ Clicking of a mouse could be heard through the line before the young girl spoke back up, _"Strut H is around the front of the Shell, the side that connects with the bridge to Shell 1. So don't go outside and fight. On that bridge you'd just be making it easy for them to concentrate their fire. Strut J on Shell 2… it regulates power to the entire Shell. A very important place, and a spot where they can't free-fire or they'll risk damaging something."_

A rather devious chuckle came from Naruto from his end of the conversation, _"Well if I've got to fight against all of those guys I don't think there's a better place for someone like me to take them on. That's my battleground. Listen for the noise and you'll know when you're clear."_

The noise to signify the diversion couldn't come soon enough apparently, because Snake could hear footsteps down the hall outside coming closer and many people speaking to one another in German. He was still dressed in his SEAL gear for his cover as Iroquois Plisken, but he had his sneaking suit on underneath, so that meant he still had his M4. Even so, a firefight was the last thing that the doctor would have ordered.

No defensive position in the whole room. Sweet. All Snake could do was crouch down on one knee while facing the door, his gun up and ready to fire. His best chance was to create a clusterfuck at the door by gunning down the first few to come through.

'Alright. I need to group these shots well or I'm going to end up wasting too much of the mag to jam up the doorway-.' Snake's thoughts came to a stop when he heard barking over the radios of the men outside. His German was a bit rusty, but a smirk still came to his face as he was able to make out the fact that an alert had been sounded elsewhere in the Shell, 'Good work kid.'

For as long as Naruto's distraction lasted, Snake had been bought some time to keep searching for Fatman's mother lode of C4. And it didn't take him too much longer to find it. Around a support pillar that ran up the center of the room, at the very top of it against the ceiling sat enough C4 to span it all around. The only reason he saw it was because of the flashing green light of the detonating device.

Snake's jaw dropped before he pulled out his small can of freezing spray meant to neutralize smaller explosive setups and looked back up into the air, "…I don't have enough spray for that." He went to his radio and called Stillman, "This is Pliskin. Do you read me Pete?"

"_I'm right here. What's up?"_

"Raiden needs to hear this too."

"_I'm listening."_

"I checked out the bottom of Strut H for you Pete, and a hell of a lot of C4's been packed into the bottom of the strut." Snake reported, "He called it right Raiden. These are sensor-proof. Sealed tight to prevent vapor-leak and there's no trace of the cologne signature."

The response he received after that statement more or less let him know that today was turning out to be just like one of those other days he had every so often. He hated those days because they never seemed to end.

XxX

(With Naruto – Shell 2 – Strut J)

The power plant in Strut J had a rather defensible position. From one entrance there was a straight and long hallway and at the end of it was a 90 degree angled turn to another similarly sized hall that led to the second exit of the building.

The inside walls of the hallways led to the actual power plant room, which housed a structure within that controlled the electric distribution through the entire Shell. A two story elevated control point sat around several transformer fields all over the room with wires hanging in the air all over the place.

Naruto stood at the joining point of the two hallways with a clone in front of him and at one of his sides, holding up their right arms toward the individual exits. On the floor in the hallway lay several of the Fallschirmjäger soldiers that had been cut down by Naruto's use of the HF Blade that he had stowed away. No need for it here anymore, at least not yet.

'Come on you fuckers… which one are you coming through?' Naruto thought to himself, eyes darting between the two exits. With a mental command, Naruto's clones began charging up the Solar Gun that they all had on their right arms built into their suit and waited.

Apparently Old Boy had coordinated them to come through both doors at the same time, because both hallways began flooding with the personal guard of the Dead Cell member, and upon seeing them come through, Naruto's clones as ordered began opening fire with the Solar Gun. Over a dozen rapid-fire bullets of light were sent down to the doors and drilled the soldiers coming through.

Even if the weapon didn't kill it still packed more than enough of a punch to bring any enemy down with sheer concussive force.

But the tide of enemies didn't stop. The original Naruto created a single clone bringing the number of functioning Narutos to four; two shooters and two to wage a direct attack. Both original Naruto and his newly created clone ran down the hall, dodging the shots from their backs courtesy of the other Narutos before drawing their HF Blades and cutting through anyone stepping through their respective doors.

This continued until Naruto felt his sword clone expire via gunshots from more advancing soldiers. On that end of the hallway they started coming further and managed to gun down Naruto's corner clones.

Gritting his teeth as he could feel the wounds, Naruto backed off. He couldn't use any of the ID locked FALs that the Fallschirmjäger dropped in death and defeat, so he didn't waste time trying to pick up a firearm. His only other weapons on his person aside from the Solar Gun and his HF Blade were his kunai and shuriken, ninja wire, and his SOCOM pistol that he wasn't wasting the bullets for yet.

That was okay though. There was plenty more fight left to be had, and by now he had trained to deal with the backlash pain of his clones dying. Thus he ducked into the power plant room and took momentary refuge there.

He already had a trap prepared for the eventual storming of the room. Both doors had metal ninja wires running from the floor right inside of them in puddles of water to directly around Naruto's fingertips. It took some of his own personal supply inside of his flask, but it was worth it. Thus he waited until it grew quiet outside and then began generating electric chakra from his hands into the wires, "Raiton: Yuurei no Todoku (Lightning Release: Reach of the Ghost)!"

The moment the assault was coordinated to be waged simultaneously, the doors flew open and members of the Fallschirmjäger piled in, only to step on the wires on the floor that were tied to Naruto's fingers.

Several more soldiers fell due to vicious electrocution, but others stepped over their bodies to get inside. His trap had already done what it was able to and Naruto cut the lines around his fingers before guns were pointed at him in the control area. He was able to dodge the gunfire by jumping up into the mass of black tangled wires overhead right underneath the ceiling.

Instead of blindly firing at the ceiling, some of the men grabbed Semtex and threw it at the ceiling to get Naruto down or kill him. The explosives blew up and knocked down copious amounts of live wires. Some of the wire edges hit the transformers and caused explosions and sparks to fly all over the room.

It was meant to smoke their blonde enemy out, but it backfired when the power went out due to the damage done to the control room. The moment the lights dimmed, sounds of men getting cut down left and right started sounding out and blasts of light from the Solar Gun erupted all over the room. Frantic panicked gunfire was aimed all around until it fell silent as there was no one left standing.

The backup electricity that was connected to the transformers in Shell 1 kicked on after a minute or so, but when they did Naruto remained in the room sheathing his sword on his back amid the fallen bodies of his attackers.

In the silence of the room Naruto could hear his Codec connection to his sister take life again, _"Okay, I'm glad it was too dark for my camera to see most of that. Good God Aniki that was ridiculous."_

"I was going more for awesome, but I'm sure you meant ridiculous in the best way possible right?"

"_No I meant ridiculous as in, 'How the fuck did you learn how to do even half of that by yourself?' That was like thirty guys from start to finish."_

"Glad someone was keeping count." Naruto said in return. With no signs of any more troops coming, he reached for his ear and made a call of his own, "There. That had better buy you all the time you need Snake."

"_Thanks for the solid, I cleared out the rest on my own. Want to do me another favor? Make sure the bridge connecting the Shells is clear. Peter Stillman is coming to diffuse the huge bomb in Strut H. I've got to make sure the last of the diversion C4s are out of commission just in case."_

"Fine." Naruto said, immediately getting on the hop to hustle back to the bridge, "I'll make sure he gets to Strut H. The Fallschirmjäger are completely done so it should be clear once he gets inside."

XxX

(With Raiden – Shell 1 – Strut E – Heliport)

One explosive left in Shell 1. All he had to do was find the final C4 he had to diffuse. As he went outside and strode on the walkway that wrapped around the building he came across a staircase that sat right by the bridge that would take him to his destination.

As he neared the bottom of the staircase that led up to the helipad on the roof he hid against the side of it as he heard voices from the top of it, _"I've taken care of that annoying fly."_ A man on the radio had to be referring to the SEAL helicopters that had been shot down. The terrorists had mowed straight through any other military intervention quickly, _"What's the situation over there?"_

A girl with a Russian accent responded in turn, "Puzzling. I saw a man dressed as a ninja just now. It's the only way to describe it. A kind of cyborg ninja, complete with a sword."

"_What?"_ The man on the radio sounded shocked and a bit angry.

Raiden eventually crept to the edge of the stairs enough to look up the staircase at the woman standing atop it with a radio in her hand, "Are you hiding something from me?" She accused sharply.

"_Olga. Are you sure it wasn't an Arsenal Tengu?"_

"Don't be a fool. You think I wouldn't know the difference?" Despite the sun glare from the angle he was looking from, Raiden was able to make out her features quite easily. She had shoulder-length silver hair and wore a gray camouflaged uniform, jacket half open, with combat boots and a harness with a belt that held two handguns, one at her chest, another at her waist. As far as looks went she was quite beautiful, even with the considerably noticeable scar that went diagonally across her face, "I've never seen field gear like that ever."

"_Alright, we'll intensify patrols. Anything else?"_

She turned her back to pace around the stair area of the helipad as she continued to converse, "Actually, one more thing. I saw a man hiding under a cardboard box." Raiden saw his opening to get closer and possibly detain this Olga woman as a prisoner.

"_Where?"_

"On the connecting bridge to Shell 2." Olga let silence permeate over the line before she spoke again, "So you believe me this time?"

"_I've seen someone use that box trick before. Don't worry, I'll have a trap set for the Shell 2 connecting bridge."_

"Over and out then."

As Olga put her radio up, Raiden decided that then was the time to act and swung around the corner with his USP pistol pointed at the top of the staircase at Olga. He had managed to get her off-guard, "Freeze!" He ordered for the second time that day to someone, "You must be one of Dead Cell."

From her place at the top of the stairs, Olga turned towards Raiden at the bottom with a look on her face like he was some sort of adorable thing completely out of place at Big Shell, "Of course not. What a thing to say?" Did she look like she had freaky powers or weird obsessive personality traits?

The glare from the sun disguised the fact that Olga had a gun in her hand until she had turned Raiden's way, but when he saw it he was quick to let her know about it, "Drop your gun."

'It took him that long to see it?' Olga thought to herself as she could feel the sun beating down on her back. She realized why and smirked down at her would-be captor, "Hn. Not a chance." Without wasting another second, Olga smoothly side-flipped over the railing at the top of the stairs in a gravity-defying move.

Raiden fired two shots and simultaneously panicked as he saw her plummet over the side of the strut and seemingly into the water inside of the oil fence. There was no way she survived that. He rushed up the stairs and looked down only to find that there was no sign of the woman at all.

"What the hell?" Raiden whispered to himself before sitting down on the stairs and making a call on his Codec to the only guy he had with him in the field; Pliskin, "I saw a female soldier. Russian."

"_Must be Olga Gurlukovich."_

"How do you know?" He asked as he searched the top of the helipad along all of the supply crates of various sizes. Eventually he came across a harrier right in the landing zone and smirked as he checked beneath it and found C4 there. With a victorious grin he started to freeze-spray it.

"_Unlike you I've been briefed. She leads a Russian private army. You'd better watch yourself with her. She's a tough one."_

She seemed tough from the way she dodged him and escaped in one move that he was more than certain he couldn't follow. He didn't see anything over the side of the stairs to catch onto at all, and you simply couldn't swim in that water even if you fell into it, "Ha. The last C4 is frozen."

"_You're way ahead of me kid. I've still got one C4 to go and Pete just got here."_

"About Pete…" Raiden said, remembering what he overheard, "There's supposed to be a trap on the bridge connecting Shell 1 and Shell 2."

"…_A trap on the bridge?"_

XxX

(With Naruto – Shell 1/Shell 2 Connecting Bridge)

"_Aniki…"_

Naruto heard his sister speak to him through his Codec and he simply gave a tap to his belt where Catherine had placed a small camera so that she could see what was going on for as long as possible, "Yeah, I know. It's not like we didn't expect something like this to happen eventually, right?"

It wasn't a problem to get Peter Stillman to Shell 2 from that bridge. But it seemed that it didn't matter because right after he did, Naruto looked directly at the other end of the bridge and saw the wrinkled and diminutive figure of Old Boy, waiting on him as if he already knew that he was there. The bridge had an upper portion and a lower portion with side catwalks beneath the top area for better observation of the water being treated below.

Naruto hid just inside of one of the strut shades that led directly out to the bridge. He could have just gone back inside. It wasn't a confrontation that needed to occur. But Naruto didn't care. He'd spent the last few years hiding from everyone. Maybe it would feel good to go out into the light for once.

"_It could be a trap. Old Boy… he's a legend internationally. He's got ten times the experience in battle that you do, and it's like he's been waiting for you over there. You don't have to go."_

"I'm not afraid of Old Boy, even if he is smarter than me." Naruto said, checking his Solar Gun's amount of energy left. It didn't matter because he'd just recharge it in the sunlight through his suit, "Let's see what's up here Kitty."

Across the other side of the bridge, Old Boy's countenance twisted at the sight of Naruto as he walked out, seemingly without fear as to his situation, "Still as hardheaded as ever I see. Time doesn't teach us some things after all, eh Rapture?" He spoke loudly to cover the span of space between the two of them.

"Hey Old Boy." Naruto greeted loudly with a hard look on his face, "You're looking… old."

The shrewd old German man didn't rise to Naruto's cheeky remark, because even he seemed to realize just how much deep shit he was in with the members of Dead Cell, "You have quite a few crimes to face the music for _boy_. Dead Cell inherited your reputation as a rogue unit after your foolish stunt on the U.S.S. Discovery two years ago. You've marked us by _them_."

"Yeah, well _they_ framed me to get me out of sight and out of mind." Naruto told Old Boy matter-of-factly, "I didn't do anything. But I doubt you want to hear a word I'm saying."

At that, a smirk came to Old Boy's weathered face, "Exactly right. Be grateful though. If I were Fortune or Chinaman you wouldn't even be getting to speak the peace that you've been given. I just wanted the satisfaction of knowing that you were alive so that I can kill you myself. No other members. Just me."

Naruto didn't say a word. He just got down in a stance prepared to move quickly. He had fifty yards of bridge to cover out of the seventy to get close enough to Old Boy to attack him. The good news was that he was clearly going to be the fastest thing walking that bridge anytime soon. The bad news was that Old Boy had an actual rifle and Naruto knew he was a crack shot.

Neither of them were privy on making the first move, but they couldn't stay there all day. And Naruto's brash nature came through as he was the first to blink so to speak. Naruto whipped out his SOCOM pistol and took a prayer of a shot all the way across the bridge that Old Boy didn't even bother trying to dodge as it missed wide.

Instead he swung up his Gewehr 43 and put Naruto in his crosshairs before squeezing the trigger. With a crack he fired a shot of his own at Naruto that the boy didn't disappoint him in dodging. With a flip Naruto landed on the railing of the bridge and started running on it in a straight line directly at Old Boy who missed three more shots before finally timing Naruto's rapid footsteps, "Still as fast as ever Rapture, but these old eyes are still sharp."

Another shot from Old Boy and Naruto chose to jump to the other railing, but Old Boy saw him jump to it and went to shoot out Naruto's foot before he landed. Gritting his teeth and knowing that he almost screwed himself over, Naruto intentionally overshot the mark on the upper railing and landed on the lower side catwalk to preserve his ankle from being shot out. He didn't need that kind of a handicap against him.

At the end of the catwalk, back on the upper part of the bridge, Old Boy leaned over the side and fired three shots at Naruto before ducking back up after the young man hotfooted it back to avoid the angled shots.

A single stick-like device came flying over the top and landed on the catwalk near Naruto. He wasn't privy to old-school explosives, but he could see the warhead at the top of this stick and knew what it was, 'Stielhandgranate!' Pumping every bit of muscle to his legs that he could, Naruto jumped into the air and backflipped straight up over the railing to the top of the bridge just as it blew up.

His landing wasn't as smooth as he would have liked due to the blowback from the grenade blast and he landed on his stomach. Pushing himself vertically off of the ground with force, he was able to avoid two more shots from Old Boy's Gewehr 43. Hearing the pop of the gun's cartridge hit the ground, Naruto's feet touched the ground and he took off back in Old Boy's direction before he could reload.

The ravages of time weren't kind to one such as Old Boy. His reload time in his prime for his weapon was three seconds max. You could adjust that for age and what arthritis and other ailments could do to one over a lifetime and tack on more length to that number. He couldn't reload fast enough to stop Naruto from sprinting a mere fifty yards in the same length of time.

The moment he realized that the Gewehr was a lost cause he reached for his sidearm and pulled out a Walther pistol to kill or deter his adversary. It was scary how quick Naruto was though, because the moment he pointed his gun up at Naruto he could see the whites of his eyes… or was that red. Either way he fired twice, but missed and had his wrist grabbed and lifted directly into the air by Naruto.

In Naruto's free hand he saw a spinning blue orb of raw energy and using a device in the sleeve of his other arm, another Walther popped into Old Boy's free grasp.

Two shots and both of them broke away from each other, falling back onto the ground. Old Boy's right arm was dislocated at the shoulder by Naruto's rough grip that lifted it into the air, and Naruto had taken two bullets right to the chest. Thank goodness for his reinforced suit's durability, he could see the bullets caught in the fabric of his chest, stopping way short of getting through. Hurt like hell though.

Old Boy scooted away as quickly as he could, seething in pain at his injury as he put up his Walther and held a radio up to his mouth before shouting into it in German, "Take aim now! You couldn't miss him if you were blind and firing without arms now!"

From the top of the strut closest to Old Boy's side of the bridge, a pair of his Fallschirmjäger soldiers held up a pair of Panzerfaust disposable anti-tank rockets and took aim at Naruto. He was right. They couldn't miss him. There was nothing on the bridge whatsoever to substitute himself with.

Despite his now useless right arm, Old Boy stood back up from the ground sneering at Naruto who was a mere twenty yards away, "Always have an ace-in-the-hole Rapture. Even if I myself cannot defeat you, you'll still die here."

"Do you really blame me that much?" Naruto muttered to himself. Older people like Old Boy that believed that they had everything accounted for in battle, they loved talking down to their enemies as they had things well in hand. You had to get your jollies in a fight somehow.

Naruto didn't wait for an answer though.

The moment Old Boy's mouth opened, Naruto held up his left arm. While the right arm of his suit had the Solar Gun built into it, his left arm had a device in it that stored a large amount of ninja wire, tipped off with a shuriken that Naruto could place in at his wrist. But without a shuriken attached the wire could still be drawn out and used.

That was what he had done when he had grabbed Old Boy's right arm to prevent him from firing earlier. He had tied his wrist up loosely with metal wire and let the device slack off on the tension until he needed it.

Once he forced the wire to go tense, Naruto yanked Old Boy with his absurd strength as hard as he could. The frail old man couldn't have weighed any more than 120 pounds at that point in his life and he flew through the air, landing on the metal bridge face first at Naruto's feet.

The blonde quickly dropped a heavy knee on Old Boy's back and forced a shout out of him before he placed a kunai to his throat and looked up at the soldiers aiming down at him, "It's over Old Boy. You lose. You should have just left well enough alone."

German curses sprayed freely from Old Boy's mouth, even as Naruto's knee pressed further into his bad back, eliciting cracks from it, "You don't get it do you? We shouldn't be alive right now. Dead Cell has no purpose. We're just a drifting group, no reason to fight for except for one. Our revenge. Our revenge on The Patriots for discarding us like refuse and destroying what was left of our lives, and you for giving them the incentive to do so. Were Colonel Jackson here this would never have occurred, but because of you…"

He trailed off as it grew harder for him to speak when Naruto dug the kunai into his skin enough to draw blood from his neck. The force his knee exerted also increased due to what he had heard from his former comrade, "I don't need you telling me that I screwed up because I already know. But if you want to dump the blame for everything that happened to you on me, you'd better come with more than shitty World War II weapons if you're gonna kill me!"

Old Boy started to laugh despite the pain his body was in from Naruto's pinning predicament, "You think you accomplished something? Taking out an old man that's knocking on one-hundred years of age. You fight any other member of Dead Cell and they'll chomp at the bit to kill you. But you're not getting any further than this bridge today. Fire on him now!"

"Are you out of your mind?" Naruto growled down at him, "I'll move and you'll take the hit instead. I'm ten times faster than you on your best day rickety bones. You don't have a chance."

"I cannot kill you myself." Old Boy admitted with a grim smile, "But the moment I die they'll know it was you, and you won't survive to see the sunset. No one else would have been able to draw me into direct combat except you. Now fire on him!"

Before the Fallschirmjäger could go through with that order, behind them appeared a figure that cut them down in a bloody display of swordplay.

The first one was slashed down before they could even turn around. The cut was deep enough to force them to fall from the top of the strut building and down the 150 plus feet into the contaminated water below. The second soldier dropped the Panzerfaust and tried to draw his sidearm, but before he could the sword of his attacker cut him cleanly across the neck, spraying blood freely like a faucet.

It wasn't the brutality of the attack that got his eye. It was the person doing it and the method they used to do so. A sword, and that body.

With the last threat to him having fallen violently, Naruto felt like he had seen a ghost as he looked up at the figure on top of the strut, "Gray Fox?" He thought he only had post-traumatic flashbacks at night in his dreams, not during the day when he was wide awake.

It couldn't have been Gray Fox, but it looked just like him. The armor was almost the exact same as the Cyborg Ninja from Shadow Moses Island. Mostly blue plating, but with red instead of yellow on joints like the elbows, knees, and shoulders. The other difference was that in the middle of the mask there was no single glowing red eye, it was just a solid facemasked helmet.

The ninja stared down at Naruto and Old Boy before choosing to freefall down the side of the building. Naruto was about to say something aloud until the ninja stabbed their sword into the metal siding of the strut building and slid down the side before jumping off and landing on the bridge soundlessly.

Naruto got up from off of Old Boy's back and held up his kunai defensively as he backed away from this strange individual, "Who are you?" He asked warily. If this person wanted to rumble that was fine with him. He still had enough in him to fight whoever the person was after taking on Old Boy and the Fallschirmjäger if it had to come to that.

The ninja just stared at him, not saying a word until a pistol was abruptly drawn and two shots were fired. One hit Old Boy in the chest and the other in his head, bringing his life to a sudden end right there with no fanfare.

This prompted Naruto to aim his fully-charged Solar Gun directly at the new Cyborg Ninja in case the bullets would be turned his way next. It seemed to be a standoff for the longest time between the two and no one moved a single muscle, _"…You look so tired."_

He'd heard that already today, but such a comment wasn't the first thing that Naruto had expected to hear from the previously mute ninja. But at least he could confirm that this wasn't Gray Fox, because the voice was totally different. Still distorted and machine-like much like Gray Fox's was due to the armor, but it wasn't his voice at all. That was good because if it was Gray Fox, Naruto probably would have shit a brick.

"You think that battle tired me out?" Naruto responded cheekily, keeping some of his bravado going, "I can go twelve straight rounds right now. I don't want to, but if that's the tree you're barking up we can do it. Who are you?"

There wasn't a sudden answer. It took another minute for the Cyborg Ninja to reply to him, _"I'm just thinking. Thinking on whether or not I should kill you now for contingency, just in case so I can use it as a bargaining chip, or wait until later when there are no options left."_

What the hell was this crazy talking about? Bargaining chip? He wasn't going to be anyone's bargaining chip or contingency plan. Just hearing that made him think of The Patriots and how they deemed to use him as their weapon, "Answer my question and tell me who you are! What do you want?"

"_The only way you're going to find that out is right before you drop dead… or I do."_

If that were the case then he would just have to beat the answer out of them. But before he could even move to initiate conflict there was a horrendous blast from behind him from Strut H at Shell 2 and he felt pain and heat at his back.

XxX

(With Raiden – Shell 1 – Strut A – Service Elevator to the Deep Sea Dock)

Pliskin freezing over the last C4 was nothing more than a trap. Once all of the C4 bombs were diffused that would only make the true explosives meant to destroy the Big Shell go off. The big ones, one of which had been discovered by Pliskin in Strut H, and the other that was supposed to be in Strut A according to explosives expert Peter Stillman.

He had seven minutes to reach the last big bomb and diffuse it, but time was ticking down and he was stuck in that bastard service elevator that seemed to be taking a millennia to get to the bottom level of Strut A.

Raiden's Codec went off and he hurriedly activated it, "Pete?"

"_Raiden, Pliskin, listen carefully."_ Stillman said gravely, _"I fell for it. Fatman has my number."_

"_Fell for what?"_ Pliskin asked. He was still in Shell 2, keeping a watch over the area near Strut H to make sure Stillman didn't get anymore unwanted visitors.

"_A proximity trigger on this bomb. Microwave. With a seven-foot range. It's not a technique I taught him. Neither was his huge multi-bomb booby trap."_ Stillman was speaking like it was all over and it was freaking Raiden out, _"Looks like he's far surpassed me as far as explosives technique goes. As for the rest-."_

"_Pete get the hell out of there!"_

Despite Pliskin's frantic request, Stillman's voice kept as calm and as collected as ever, _"There's less than 30 seconds left. It's too late. Pliskin, get away from Strut H as far as you can. Raiden, keep your distance when you stop your bomb on your end or you'll just end up triggering the same trap as me. Both bombs need to detonate in order for the facility to collapse."_

"Me?" Raiden exclaimed. His heart was thumping in his chest, "I'm not sure I can do this!"

"_But I am. Do it. I know you can."_

No other words came from Stillman's end of the connection before a deafening explosion sounded out and there was nothing but static from that point forward on the line, from both Pliskin and Stillman, "Hey! Hey! Someone answer me!"

There was no response. And Raiden felt entirely too angry to do anything but turn his Codec off, gritting his teeth as the elevator finished its descent to the deep sea dock.

It stopped and let him off and was audible enough to attract Gurlukovich Mercenary sentries to inspect what was going on. The moment the gates of the elevator automatically opened up they poured inside to see just who had ridden it down there, but they didn't see a soul inside.

They missed the man holding on to the caged ceiling of the elevator who grabbed his USP pistol in one hand and fired two headshots that killed both men, letting him drop down to the ground to vacate the elevator, 'Two minutes left!' He left the supply elevator area and sprinted down the hallway back to the dock, catching sight of two soldiers walking his way while he did so. Not wasting a second he fired six shots, five of which hit and killed his enemies without a fight.

His second bomb sensor was going mad at that point as he searched high and low for the last bomb. It was never stronger than when he reached the deep sea pool that he used to infiltrate the facility. Underneath the personal submarine that was hoisted off of the ground above the water there was a ton of C4 packed underneath it. Heeding Pete's advice, Raiden stayed back and adjusted the spray can to spray more freely.

In a matter of seconds he had rendered the final explosive nullified. What a day though. An amateur like him had survived a bombing threat while a man that was noted to be legendary for diffusing explosives died because of a trap involving them.

With nothing else he could do, Raiden placed his hand to his ear to make a Codec call, "Colonel, the last bomb has been diffused." At a great cost though, "Is there any damage report for the explosion?"

"_The duct for diverting contaminated seawater is destroyed, and the central core section of Shell 2 is flooding. The explosions ignited the oil slick on the surface, but the chemicals meant to treat the oil stayed in containment. There's no immediate danger. Shell 1 was unaffected. The price was high, but the threat of the bomb is over for now. Now on with the mission."_

Yeah, right. On with the mission.

Peter Stillman was a good man, killed by the explosives of the man that he trained to save lives, not take them. This was all he could think about as he walked slowly back through the deep sea dock toward the hallway, 'Even a fool would know that Pete wasn't trying to pass down how to make perfect explosives to Fatman. So what made him think that becoming a bomber was appropriate.'

People would do what they wanted in the end. All the previous generation could do was guide them. If the reins were too loose they were liable to wind up anywhere, but if they were held too tightly the next generation would resent the one that came before it and lash out at its first chance.

When exactly did he try to become a social analyst? As if he had any room to speculate on that kind of thing. He was a soldier, not a philosopher.

"_Raiden the terrorists have retaliated for our bomb neutralization."_ That sudden report from the Colonel got him to freeze in his tracks, _"A hostage has been killed. Shot in the head. They shot one of them on the roof just to make sure we caught it. One of our satellites caught it, clear as day. They announced they would kill one hostage every hour from now on."_

Damn. And it was technically his fault, "What are my orders? What should I do?"

"_Stay with your mission objective. Rescue the President?"_

"What about the other hostages?"

"_President Johnson is your first priority."_

What kind of copout bullshit response was that? He didn't even sound like it was hard to say. Those were just regular people they were pulling out and plugging in broad daylight as a show of force, "Priority my ass! They're all in danger!"

He was already planning on how he was going to try and reach the hostages to get them out before the voice of his girlfriend reached him again, _"Jack, be reasonable. I know what you're feeling but you can't save them all alone."_

"You're right. Not by myself." Raiden said, already knowing who he was going to try and count on for something like this. The only other person in this foxhole with him.

"_Are you expecting that Pliskin to come through?"_ Damn again. It was like the Colonel could read his mind or something, _"It looks like he's turned his radio off too."_

Asshole. He had just been caught in an explosion. The thing probably got wrecked. If Fatman's two bombs were strong enough to compromise the integrity of Big Shell then just leaving Strut H before it blew was not going to be enough to avoid the blast entirely, "I can't complete this mission by myself."

"_That man was not included in the simulation. He is not a factor in this mission. Your mission must remain a solo effort."_

"What are you talking about?" That was retarded. Who did anything like this by themselves? He was fighting an entire army, no one did that alone! What in the world were they expecting of him? "What about the SEALs? No second attempt?"

"_They haven't even gotten to planning that. In the meantime you're our only hope."_

"…Understood." Raiden grumbled before shutting his Codec off. He sure didn't forget to do it that time. As he walked through the hall back to the storage room with the freight elevator he could only let out a sigh.

Wait. Why was the elevator moving again? Was that reinforcements for the troops that he killed? They couldn't check in so maybe someone had come down there to see what the problem was.

In a word, yes. Just not the kind of reinforcements he had been expecting.

He hid behind some of the freight in the room and observed who had gotten off only to curse internally at the sight of a portable rail gun, then the dark-skinned figure of Fortune, complete with her trench coat draped over her shoulders as she stepped out, "I can't tell you how happy I am that you were alive after all. I knew this moment would come."

Raiden raised an eyebrow but stayed silent and hidden, 'Is she talking about me? That's pretty creepy if she is.'

"Show yourself and finish me." Fortune demanded, her rail gun charged and ready to fire at the first sight of anything alive to eradicate, "Finish me like you finished off my father Rapture! Otherwise you'll be the one to die!"

'Who the hell is Rapture?' Raiden queried internally as he heard her gun begin to squeal loudly, "Oh crap…" He had to dive out from his cover or be turned to debris along with it from the power of the rail gun. Great, so cover meant nothing. But upon getting sight of him she seemed to be taken aback.

"That's not him." Fortune said, seemingly to herself before smirking, "This could be… interesting. You've seen the fires of hell, haven't you?" It would be just his luck that the elevator would decide to go back up to the surface of the strut at that very moment, "Maybe you can give me death." She said to Raiden before pointing her gun at him again, "My name is Fortune; lucky in war and nothing else, without a death to call my own. Hurry and kill me please!"

"Well I'm not 'Rapture' but I'm sure going to try." Raiden said, reloading his USP to make sure he had enough shots on him for a fight.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter done.<strong>

**Alright I'm going to go buy snacks for a grand viewing experience tomorrow because right now my cupboards are bare and that is incredibly embarrassing. You all can get back to your regularly scheduled lives as well if you'd like. I'm through wasting your time for now.**

**Until the next time around folks, Kenchi out. **


	26. Ease Your Troubled Mind

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. The best thing I have to compare this feeling to is that feeling that get when you see something on TV and you say, "I can do that." But you really can't do that and you know it, you're just so arrogant that you think you can.

You know you know what I'm talking about. Everybody does. Well that's what I mean.

**Chapter 26: Ease Your Troubled Mind**

* * *

><p>The many crates and freight containers in the Strut A storage facility would normally make extremely good cover, but for Raiden at that particular moment it might as well have all been made of paper-mache with the weapon that he was facing down.<p>

With a terrifying whine of the gun being charged, it let off a round that outright pulverized the sturdy metal shipping cases, sending chunks flying all about. And Fortune wasn't even shooting at Raiden to begin with.

'How can she even use that thing without dying?' Raiden thought to himself as he tried to get an angle on Fortune. She wasn't even trying to take cover. She stood directly in front of the elevator that was his only way out… unless he decided to backtrack to the deep sea dock. But that would just end up with him being cornered.

He could count on one thing though; how long it took for her to fire consecutive shots.

Popping up from where he was taking cover, Raiden took aim with his USP and fired two shots right at Fortune's head, only for the bullets to veer off course when they seemed to be dead-on, "You mean that thing outside on the bridge was real?"

His shots gave away his position and Fortune pointed right at him, charging her rail gun before firing another shot that pierced straight through forklift and tore it apart. Raiden was able to avoid it with a timely dive, but he had to pat out the fire on his legs from the near miss.

"What good are you?" Fortune asked as she saw Raiden dive and already had another shot prepared to shoot at him, "Put me out of my misery now!"

'Maybe if you weren't bulletproof I could!' Raiden thought to himself as he ducked down, hands over his head as the dangerous and volatile shot brought down parts of the ceiling on top of him. She started shooting rapid fire shots, barely charging her gun before unleashing another destructive torrent that tore through anything that she could see downsight from her, 'She's barely even fighting!'

And she wasn't. There wasn't any technique to what she did. She had a big gun, and neither bullets nor explosive devices hurt her. That was all there was to how she fought. If he was even ballsy enough to get close, the electromagnetic discharge from the gun alone would tear his insides apart. That alone made it a wonder as to how she could even use it and live, especially the way she was shooting.

Fuel barrels spilled and caught ablaze from the electricity flying off of Fortune's rail gun. All Raiden could do was run and hide, but eventually he needed to come up with something drastic. She was firing as if ammunition wasn't a problem, so it probably wasn't, and it would only be a matter of time until it was just her and him with nothing between the two of them to keep her from missing.

Raiden grabbed a piece of debris and threw it out and into the air to draw Fortune's fire. It was a successful tactic and he used that opportunity to unload the vast majority of the clip of his gun in her direction. Nothing hit.

"That went nowhere." She taunted before blasting at Raiden again. A series of blasts tore apart everything in sight. He was like a rat. When she destroyed on piece of cover he would hide somewhere else, trying to find something sturdy enough to use to fight back. Not a chance.

The entire place had been torn apart in a matter of minutes. Smoke from Fortune's repeated shots filled the air with no path to escape through. But it rendered the visibility in the room to nearly nonexistent. With a sneer on her face, she resigned to wait for a sign of motion or for the smoke to clear first. While her shooting hadn't been too choosy beforehand, shooting when you couldn't see at all was a waste and a downright foolish thing to do.

Lying flat on his belly, not moving a muscle once the shooting stopped, Raiden's lungs filled with unclean air, but he didn't dare move, cough, or anything. He needed to think. What in the world was he going to do to beat her? There wasn't anything left except for the last few dregs of crates. The ground was covered in oil and that would catch on fire soon enough and him along with it if he didn't get out of there.

The elevator then opened behind Fortune to reveal Vamp in his open trench coat, showing the scars on his chest from earlier. As if things couldn't get worse. Now hiding wouldn't even be effective.

"I'll take over Queen." Vamp said, trying to peer through the smoke as he stood next to Fortune while she kept aiming, "It seems our friend Fatman is out of control."

"He'll actually try to destroy the place?" Fortune questioned. Fine if he was that much of a fool he could die. She wasn't that interested in Raiden anyway now that it was clear he didn't have what it took to kill her. There was still Rapture to look for. He killed Old Boy after all, "Why would he do such a thing?"

"Who knows, but this could unravel everything we've planned." Vamp shook his head pitifully at the thought, "He's nothing more than a stereotypical mad bomber now. He's completely lost sight of our ideals, and with it his loyalty to Commander Jackson."

Well that was the final straw and all that Fortune needed to hear to get her in gear to get rid of Fatman. With no more loyalty to her deceased husband he wasn't one of Dead Cell, "Fine. I'll take care of the wayward soul." She put her gun down and turned off the power to it, "It wasn't him anyway. I expected more of this one really. Completely useless."

A chuckle came from Vamp at Fortune's almost childish disapproval over fighting someone that couldn't kill her and bring her death, "Then he's all mine. I'll see you later Queen." With a nod, Fortune turned her back and headed to the elevator.

'Now!' Raiden hopped off of his belly and fired five shots at the non-attentive Fortune. She turned around after the first shot veered off course, but the fourth shot deflected away from her and hit Vamp in the liver, getting a pained gasp from the man, the fifth deflected shot deposited itself directly through Vamp's forehead.

His eyes rolled back in his head and Fortune caught him before he could fall to the ground. She set Vamp onto the ground and kneeled down next to him, ignoring Raiden as he continued to fire at her again and again with the same effect.

"Damn it." Raiden muttered as he ran out of bullets in the clip, and all for naught. How much clearer of a target could you get to shoot at? It was obnoxious, he should have killed her twelve times over already.

"Vamp no." Fortune said quietly, "Are you gone?" She got no response from the critically wounded man that seemed to bring her further into sorrow, "No… that death was meant for me. Why am I the only one that can't die!" She started to laugh hysterically over Vamp's fallen body as Raiden started to creep from his place over past her, "How long am I going to be cheated out of death? How long are you going to force me to live?"

From where he was moving, Raiden could see the tears on her face, but kept his gun up just in case. It wasn't like it would do anything if it came down to it, but it made him feel a bit more secure. As if he wouldn't get completely murdered if she decided to pick up that rail gun again and try to take him apart.

Fortunately she seemed to be caught up in her own dramatics over Vamp to notice or care about him leaving, which Raiden did with great haste. The elevator was his friend, and he took it back to the top of Strut A.

As he sat down in the corner and tried to settle his breath while waiting for the slow elevator to make its way up, his Codec went off. With an annoyed grunt, Raiden activated it, "Yeah?" Who else would find it prudent to call him after he had dealt with an unwinnable battle? The Colonel of course; the man that seemed to have no sense of human tact or timing with his calls. Enough never seemed to be enough.

"_Raiden. Fatman's contacted us directly. He placed a bomb directly on the heliport and asked specifically for you. He's killed off Peter, now he's after you. You have five minutes to reach the bomb and defuse it."_

"Any backup?"

"_No, none. It appears he has a different agenda from the rest of Dead Cell."_

A different agenda huh?

Raiden just listened to the Colonel before staring at the gun in his hand. It hadn't been ten minutes since he had been forced to listen to the death of Peter Stillman and perhaps also Iroquois Pliskin by way of massive explosion. And for what? Apparently he wasn't even going along with Dead Cell any longer, so what was it all for?

Enough was never enough.

There was nothing else to be said by either Raiden or the Colonel, thus the latter cut his contact with the former. But that still left one person to speak that had been listening and felt a little alarmed or disturbed at Raiden's new silence, _"Jack… are you okay?"_ Rose asked him with a great touch of concern in her voice, _"Do you want to talk?"_

At first the white-haired young man said nothing before staring at his gun with the empty cartridge that he had spent on Fortune. At least he had taken out Vamp, albeit inadvertently, "I'll be fine. I don't want you to see me or hear me while I'm like this Rose. Okay?"

She didn't sound too sure of herself as she responded, _"If you're sure Jack. If you want to talk I'm always here. Don't leave me out."_

With that the connection cut out as the elevator reached the surface and sunlight touched Raiden's face again, fresh air filling his lungs once more, 'Letting you in might be the most dangerous thing I could ever do.' He popped out his empty cartridge before slamming a new one in and cocking his USP in preparation for another fight, "Fine then. If Fatman wants me I won't keep him waiting."

Who was he to deny the bastard his desired suicide via Raiden?

XxX

Back in the deep sea dock, Fortune continued to cry over Vamp's fallen body until his eyes suddenly snapped open, full of life once more. His breath came out in a chilling mist and he could hear and feel Fortune crying over him.

No, he wasn't going to let her keep doing that, "There's no need for sorrow Queen." He said, surprising her out of her tears, "I died once already. I can't die twice." In return, Fortune couldn't do anything but embrace the seemingly undead Romanian man tightly.

Two seemingly unkillable super-soldiers.

XxX

(Shell 2 – Core Rooftop)

Sniper Wolf simply sat up on her now destroyed perch of the numerous vats meant to pump chemicals into Shell 2's processes. The blast shook her up momentarily, but not enough so that she couldn't do what she needed to help someone. The place was still intact and stable, so everything was fine.

And as a shaky hand planted itself over the edge of the roof and pulled someone up onto it, it was evident to her that her help had been successful, "Long time no see little probie." She greeted with a saucy smile, "I saw all of that by the way. Very impressive. I didn't know humans could jump off of falling debris like that."

"Yeah, don't worry about helping me up. I've got it." Naruto said sarcastically as he pulled himself up over the edge of the roof and lay out flat on his back staring up at the sky. His chest was heaving quickly, but he didn't sound short of breath, "It's not like I just dodged collapsing death or anything."

"Sorry, I deal in a particular set of skills. Manual labor is not included in that set." Wolf said as she dropped down from where she had been sitting, "I couldn't help you fight Old Boy. My view of the bridge is blocked." She then turned towards the Shell 1 and Shell 2 bridge that was complete and utter hanging scrap at that point, "Well… it _was_ blocked."

And now it wasn't, because Strut G and Strut H of Shell 2 got obliterated and now were a part of the contaminated water below. The first thing she did when she got a good enough view to see that the bridge was collapsing was to get on her radio and call the frequency that she had received from Meryl. Naruto's frequency.

It was kind of like a video game. She told Naruto to do something and he did it with no lag time in between. It was good that he still held enough trust in her to listen to her without an ounce of time to talk beforehand. He was still good at taking orders it seemed. That was the only way he got off of that bridge before he fell into the water along with it.

Sniper Wolf wasn't being vain at all with the feeling that she held Naruto's life in her hands instead of the other way around for once.

But all good things came to an end, and he of course survived and clawed his way up the side of the Shell 2 Core building. It was pretty bad up there since a portion of it got caught in the blast from Fatman's bomb, but it was the most stable building of the Shell since it was the largest and the center of it.

Naruto wasn't going to bring up why Wolf didn't shoot the Cyborg Ninja, but it was probably because it was either take aim at the ninja and shoot whoever it was down, letting them both fall into the water or keep watch over him and guide him to safety over the collapsing bridge, leaving the risk of letting the ninja escape. He appreciated that she picked the one that didn't end up with him falling 150 feet into toxic water, "What was with that damn ninja?"

"I wish I could tell you." Wolf said as she sat down on the ground next to where Naruto was laying on his back, "So tell me how much you know about this fine mess you've wormed your way into."

"What do you want to know that I know?" Naruto asked, taking a moment to rest a bit, "About the fact that Olga's mission, whatever it is, is supposed to happen here? About the fact that this place is just a front for a new Metal Gear? Stop me when I've hit one. I wish I knew what the endgame for all of this was though, but isn't that what makes this fun?" He finished sardonically.

Indeed.

Now that Wolf had a close-up look at Naruto she observed his suit that was still pristine other than the two bullet holes from Old Boy's pistol shots in the chest. But they weren't tough enough to get through. The thing that caught her attention was not his equipment however. It was his face. He looked five years older than he should have. She could even see scruffy blonde whiskers tracing his jawline, and she didn't mean the marks on his cheeks. His eyes still had their sapphire specks in them but they seemed duller now, the light in them seemed to be fading.

Oh her cute little probie. What had the world done to him?

"You look so tired." Sniper Wolf said, getting a snort of amusement out of Naruto, "No I mean it. When is enough going to be enough for you? What is the point? The Tanker Incident was the equivalent of the Patriots giving you your walking papers. You could have scattered to the four winds and never come back."

"Not a chance." Naruto admitted with a deep sigh, "Not like this. I can't let it stand like this. Not until I think that all of my friends and family are safe from things like what happened to me, when I think they're safe from things like what happened to Olga." Coincidentally the only way he could do that was to dismantle the Patriots, "I wouldn't die for this country, but I would for all of you. I just want to focus on the things that I care about. The things that I think I can save."

"You can't save everyone."

"Why the hell can't I just try?"

The two of them locked eyes. Though Naruto's posture on his back was one of laziness and relaxation, his eyes were different. More unforgiving than the deep ocean that surrounded Big Shell. On the other hand Wolf's eyes spoke a tale of someone that knew better already.

"I know what it sounds like." He eventually said to his former superior, "But is it really that bad to want to try? When it comes to all of you I'm greedy. I don't want to lose any of it. Not a single one of you."

"What if you don't have the choice to?" Wolf asked, sounding like she knew firsthand with a grim and humorless smile on her face, "I had comrades in FOXHOUND little probie, remember? Comrades that shared a particular goal. We all failed at Shadow Moses and now the only ones remaining from that scheme are Ocelot and myself. Liquid Snake, Vulcan Raven, Decoy Octopus, Psycho Mantis… they all died that day four years ago. My point is that somehow certain things are beyond you and there's nothing that you can do."

"Telling me to leave Wolf?"

"No, I am merely saying that just in case things do not end well… it isn't your fault."

Naruto just let out a grunt and went back to staring at the sky. There wasn't any reason to think about anything such as that. Ten minutes. He'd catch his breath for ten minutes and then he would proceed forward. He shut his eyes to keep the sun out of them and thought to himself, "There's a way to stop all of this without ruining the world too… I just haven't thought of it yet."

XxX

(Shell 2 Core)

The damage dealt to Shell 2 from Fatman's bomb was immense with the loss of Struts G and H, and the complete destruction of the bridge connecting Shells 1 and 2 entirely left the two portions of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries isolated between the two areas of the immense Big Shell.

With Old Boy's death, control of the security of Shell 2 went back to Meryl, at least until Olga found a way over there from Shell 1 after her meeting with the would-be leader of the uprising, 'I wish she would have put me in charge of the Arsenal Tengu, but that's supposed to be closely connected to the Metal Gear project here so I can see why she didn't.' Meryl thought to herself as she walked the halls.

So much for a break. She could wait for another few hours until Olga was done though. But she wouldn't fight Naruto though. If he was discovered she would not engage him, she didn't care what the consequences would be. This plan wasn't hers. It was only her loyalty and friendship to Olga that kept her there.

It was clear that Naruto had been the one to fight and kill Old Boy, even though she hadn't seen it. No one else would have drawn that crotchety old stickler into battle except for him, and everyone knew of his death. The Fallschirmjäger, what was left of it from Dead Cell's liquidation six months ago, was destroyed as well. Nothing else would ever force Old Boy to make such an irresponsible and rash decision.

To the very few in the know the cat was out of the bag. Naruto, or Rapture, was there. And then there was Fatman's little playmate there as well that he was antagonizing into a trap on the heliport. If anyone else came near that place he'd blow the bomb that he set up there.

Stupid bomber. Why were so many skilled soldiers also sociopathic pricks?

As she planned on dispatching a patrol to check out the remaining areas of Shell 2, a hand grabbed her arm strongly when she grabbed her radio. An abrupt turn to an open doorway saw that the person that had grabbed onto her was Chinaman. Past his trench coat, long dark braid, mustache, and long dragon tattoo that ran down his face she could see the anger on his face, "What do you want?"

"Shut up girl." Chinaman seethed lowly. Did she just see the tattoo on his face writhe? That was impossible and gross, "Old Boy dies, but you survive. How convenient that Rapture did not kill you. How convenient that he waited until Old Boy traded shifts with you to make his presence known. You and he are old war buddies from Shadow Moses… correct?"

"That doesn't mean I know where Naruto-." She literally choked on her words when Chinaman grabbed her around the neck with one hand and used his kung fu principles to paralyze her free arm from the shoulder down. No shooting her way out of this one, "Let go of me you bastard…" She managed to grit out.

Chinaman just continued to glare at her hatefully, "Don't lie to my face girl. I can sense in your chi that you are. I'll break your neck." He would have kept talking were it not for the sound of an AN-94 being readied to fire, right at his back. He turned around and saw what he figured to be an ordinary masked Gurlukovich Mercenary pointing a gun at him, "You have a death wish boy?"

"I'm not the best soldier in the world. I'm not even nearly as good as Meryl. And I don't have freaky abilities like the rest of you in Dead Cell, but with the gun already at your back does it matter?" At the sound of the mercenary's American accent, Chinaman sneered at him and roughly released Meryl before walking away.

He didn't even bother to turn around looking at either of them as he left the hallway, "Woman, you had better tell Rapture that if he has even the slightest bit of compunction, of self-respect or honor at all, he will face me at the site of his betrayal of Dead Cell. If he is not brain dead as we always figured he was he should know what I mean." Chinaman then stopped walking to address the other person there, "And the next time you try to hold someone up boy, make sure that your knees aren't knocking together hard enough for your captive to hear it."

Meryl simply glared at Chinaman, fighting the urge to pull out a Desert Eagle and see just what made him so damn special, but looking at Johnny and the fact that his legs were indeed quivering she relented with a softened gaze, "Thanks Johnny." She said while rubbing the shoulder that Chinaman paralyzed temporarily.

"No problem." Johnny said, giving her an eye-smile behind his balaclava before his stomach started to churn, "Ugh… I don't know what I would have done if I actually had to fight that guy. He would have ripped me apart."

"Well it was very brave of you anyway." Whether or not he would have won wasn't the point. The fact that he had done something to begin with was what mattered. Johnny was goofy and clumsy, but he was a good guy, "But he doesn't want to fight either of us."

"He wants to fight with the Boss." Johnny finished as he already knew what she was about to say, "What should we do?" In return, Meryl just tossed her radio in her hand before locking eyes with Johnny, "You're gonna give him what he wants?" He asked in a bit of disbelief, "Boss is here looking for Miss Olga. He doesn't have time to fight with his old unit."

"What if it's what Naruto wants though?" Meryl said in thought, "He didn't have to face off with Old Boy the way he did. He did that by choice. He didn't even have to come here to begin with. He had to know if Olga was going to be here and we were going to be here that Dead Cell was probably here too."

Perhaps Naruto was tired of running and avoiding everything. Avoiding the Patriots, avoiding the trouble that he could possibly bring onto his loved ones, avoiding the strife he had caused inadvertently against his old comrades in Dead Cell.

He fought with Old Boy because he wanted to. Maybe there was some kind of twisted desire to confront the unit that he left under the most dubious of terms? Perhaps he felt that part of this terrorist plot was a monster of his own unintended creation?

Just as quickly though, Meryl squashed that line of thinking and put her radio back on her belt, "No… that's self-destructive." She said with a shake of her head, "There's enough of that going around. God knows I don't need to be stirring up more amongst our friends."

"So what about Chinaman?" Johnny queried as he walked with Meryl back down the hall, "He's going to be waiting for Boss at that spot. The place he said was the site of his betrayal to Dead Cell."

"I don't know. I'll think of something."

The pair walked by the open door of a storage room with an out of place cardboard box sitting right in the middle of it, 'You'll understand eventually, but you're all still young. Sometimes you've got to face down your past.'

Seeing Meryl was a shock to Snake's system, but he remembered the stomach virus guy from when he had been imprisoned in Shadow Moses. He of course remembered that Naruto had friends inside of the Gurlukovich Mercenary system as it had been something shared as a show of good faith when they first started working together. He had been given names as a show of good faith and this was clearly true them after overhearing them.

And they seemed to have his best interests at heart, but in this instance avoiding his major issue was not going to solve anything. If anything the only one that could make a decision like that, on whether or not he wanted to fight his old squad, was Naruto. If they weren't going to say anything to him about it Snake would.

XxX

(With Raiden – Shell 1 – Strut E – Heliport)

There was a grave and completely unamused look on the face of Raiden as he reached the top of the heliport. He noticed the harrier was gone that had been there before, but he didn't put it past Fatman to move something like that for his own ends especially with the massive crane hanging over the top of the entire building. He was a bomber not a pilot, but he might have used it to run away, leaving his bomb as a trap.

Either way, he saw one and only one C4 package on the ground in the middle of the 'H' on the pad and fought the urge to kick it just in case. He just used the same old spray can and froze it over before his time ran out. After doing so he heard the sound of rollerblades and turned around, walking back around the area that surrounded the heliport.

"You're right on time I see. I like a punctual man." Raiden didn't say a word, he just held up his USP and aimed it around the machinery and shelves strewn about the outside of the heliport, "I am Fatman. The greatest humanity has to offer, and the lowest."

"Agreed." Raiden said, "At least with the lowest part…"

"Can you hear it? Hear this rhythm?" Fatman asked as he continued to skate around the heliport. Raiden could begin seeing him as he coasted from object to object, concealing his moves while the ticking of a clock grew louder, "It's the rhythm of time, and life! Don't you love that sound? I used to hang around department store clock counters just to hear it."

Bravely, or stupidly, Fatman slid to a stop directly in front of Raiden. A large man in an olive trench coat over a blast suit with a high collar, his head was bald and seemed to have been burned at some point in the past. In his almost womanly hands he held a cocktail drink.

"Life is short." Fatman continued to speak almost whimsically, "Bombs tell the time with every moment of their existence, and nothing else announces its own end with such fanfare. Glad you could make it, the party's about to start. Let's drink to Stillman shall we?" He said mockingly as he began to do just that.

"If you destroy the Big Shell you'll never collect any kind of ransom." Raiden said. He wanted to just shoot the man, but he needed to make sure there weren't any more secret bombs in the facility first.

"Ransom?" Fatman seemed thoroughly confused about what Raiden was speaking of, "What are you talking about, a ransom?"

Raiden was not in the mood to be screwed with at this time though, "Thirty billion dollars in cash! That's the point of this whole thing!" Much to his chagrin and confusion though, Fatman just began laughing at him.

It was like some kind of joke that no one was in on but him, "So that's what's going on huh?" He continued to laugh even when he noticed his young adversary growing angrier, "Oh, you'll know soon enough, and I couldn't care less what _they_ plan to do. My ambitions are much more simple; to be the most famous bomber of all time. I'll go down in history."

"You're nuts!" Raiden shouted into the open air, "No one's going to give a damn about you after I kill you. You're not even going to get an unmarked grave, they'll drop you into the ocean for the sharks and that's it."

"I'll be remembered as the man who beat Peter Stillman!" Fatman continued before taking another sip of his drink, "That chance is the only reason I chose to assist _them_."

Hearing that bastard say anything about someone that was there just to save the lives of other pissed Raiden off even further, "Like hell you beat Stillman! He had your damn number!" Fatman's now empty glass cracked in his hand due to his tightened grip, "You have nothing of his courage or-."

"That crock was a dead man even back six months ago! Only ones with the right stuff could survive the hell that we went through."

"The liquidation of Dead Cell?"

"Call it what you want to." Fatman said, calming himself down, "It set me free though. Opened the way to a new dimension. I'm not stuck by orders and restrictions any longer. Now I'm free to become the emperor amongst detonation devotees!"

"You're a common criminal and that's the only way anyone's ever going to remember you."

"How dare you! I'm an artist!" Fatman yelled at the insolent young man, throwing his glass onto the ground in exasperation and swiftly gliding off on his skates out of Raiden's sight again, "That's why I dislike boorish military types. So this is how the game will work boy. I'll plant a bomb, and it'll explode soon after that. If you want to stay in one piece you'll have to do something about it. Now laugh and grow fat!"

Raiden first and foremost moved to his right and jumped onto the top of a series of large cases, able to see Fatman skating away at a surprisingly efficient pace for someone his size. He shot at the rotund bomber three times and missed before noticing that Fatman had planted a C4 package in the middle of his movement. Jumping from his case to a shelf and then flipping to the ground, Raiden held his spray can in one hand and his gun in another while he sprayed the explosive to neutralize it. He didn't want to risk just how much force any one of Fatman's bombs could generate.

As he did this, a darkly laughing Fatman skated directly for him while he was stuck spraying his bomb. A Glock 18 was Fatman's gun of choice as he tried to gun Raiden down, "Feh… you should stick to bombs and not to shooting." He said as he actually managed to hit the easily visible Fatman twice in the torso, only managing to knock him down, 'That suit is thick enough to protect him better than a vest would.'

Since he wasn't dead yet, Fatman laughed as he got back up slowly. His bomb seemed to pay off in that Raiden needed to come to a complete stop for several seconds to handle them. He could use that, "A good first round!" Fatman said as Raiden finished with the bomb and went to shoot at him again only for him to be on the move once more, "Let's raise the stakes, shall we?"

With a grunt of annoyance, Raiden started running and actually managed to keep stride with Fatman, showing his speed as he ran parallel with the man with crates separating them. Every time they passed through an opening, Raiden would take a shot at him, but could never time his shot well enough to hit his target.

Eventually, Fatman got just ahead of him at one of these openings and turned in Raiden's direction, Glock pointed at him as he laughed madly and fired. Raiden stopped and took a shot to the arm, but grit his teeth and lowered his center of gravity. Instead of being bowled over by a 300 pound man on rollerblades, Raiden managed to lift him up with Fatman's own momentum and throw him into the air.

Fatman landed on his back with a thud and a grunt, but still let out a pained chuckle as he began to try and move again.

With a bullet in his arm, things could have been worse had it not been for his state-of-the-art suit. But he then noticed a beeping noise and saw that a C4 had been planted and adhesively stuck onto his thigh, "You've got to be kidding me! There's no way!"

"Yes way!" Fatman replied as he rolled onto his round belly and took his own shots at Raiden. At the moment, Raiden had to worry about the gunfire and dodged them, choosing to find a place to hide to deal with his little explosive problem, "I told you already that I'm the emperor of explosives!" He said as he got back up onto his rollerskates.

Meanwhile, the entire time that Fatman had been patting himself on the back and getting up to keep fighting, Raiden had taken refuge on the top of a freight case. Holding the freezing spray in his hand he bit back a cry of pain as he froze the C4 on his leg right there on the spot. He didn't have the time to remove it altogether while fighting so he needed a quick fix, even if his leg was screwed for the time being.

"_Are you okay Jack? Can you keep fighting?"_

"I'm fine… I think. I mean I might have given myself borderline frostbite, but I'm no medic or doctor. Not the smartest thing I've ever done, but hey this kind of thing never came up in VR either."

"Yoo hoo! I've planted another bomb for you! Forty-five seconds to get rid of it or it'll get rid of you! Isn't this fun?"

"I'm so gonna kill this guy Rose." Raiden said to his girlfriend and seemingly to himself as well as he stood up and looked for Fatman again. He located the man and fired two shots at him, missing each time. It did what he wanted though, and moved him away from where Fatman had set his C4, 'Damn it, I slowed myself down.'

"Try aiming for a change!" Fatman taunted as Raiden dropped back down to the ground by his bomb, 'What a fool.'

Instead of immediately defusing the bomb, Raiden pulled out a claymore mine that he had managed to procure earlier while sneaking through Shell 1 when he was on Fatman's wild goose chase of explosives. Procure-on-site procedure had its uses even if it was inconvenient for direct engagements, because you could pick up and use any damn thing that you thought was useful as long as you could carry it somewhere.

He set it right in hiding in the pace with the best path that Fatman could rush him and shoot at him from. He had shown that he needed to be close to shoot because he was a terrible shot, and Raiden was going to jump all over that.

The counter-trap was set when Raiden sprung Fatman's own and began spraying the bomb, and right on cue the sound of skates coming nearer echoed out until he saw the large form of the mad bomber coming his way with his Glock held up and shooting with a mad grin on his face.

Three shots, nothing hit and then a small click noise.

BOOM!

Fatman never saw it coming and was hurled through the air by the blast as his suit was tested to its absolute limit by the shockwave and the shrapnel that pieced it up. He landed on his head and Raiden finished freezing the bomb and wasted no time in running over to Fatman who was still trying to get up off of the ground.

Not a chance, as Raiden unloaded shot after shot into the large man. He tried to crawl away, hoping that the durability of his suit would hold out, but it could only take so much before bullets started ripping into his flesh. Still, Raiden continued to fire until Fatman stopped crawling and turned around to sit against a crate as blood started to soak through his clothing, "My suit…" He said weakly, "Now I've nothing to wear to the party." He joked weakly.

"The party's over for you." Raiden said, still holding up his gun carefully in case of any nasty surprises.

"That's what you think." Fatman suddenly held up a small device and hit the button on it before dropping it and letting it fall to the ground.

Raiden immediately grabbed him by his neck and stuck his USP against the man's bald head, "What was that? What did you just do?"

Fatman ignored him and looked at the hand he had just used to activate his device, "I have such beautiful hands. These delicate hands can craft works of art."

Swatting the vain bomber's hands away, Raiden put his gun right in Fatman's face, "Answer me! What the hell is this?"

"It's the switch for the biggest bomb in the entire place." Raiden kicked the trigger away and aimed his gun at it, planning to shoot it, "It's no use. Once it's activated there's no stopping the count.

"Where did you plant it? Where is it?"

"Somewhere in this area." Fatman taunted with a grin, "Don't worry. It's very close by." He could feel Raiden's absolute disdain for him and it only got him to laugh again as blood started falling from his lips, "Go ahead and shoot me. I'm already dead. When it goes off it'll take the Big Shell with it. But that's your problem now, not mine." He concluded as he shut his eyes.

"Tell me where I can find the bomb!" Raiden demanded, but there wasn't anything he could do to demand such a thing.

"This is the highlight of the party. Bring it on I say. _They'll_ be happy too." He grew weaker and weaker as his grin seemed to expand nevertheless, "I die here… and start my legend. Too bad you won't be around to see the movies. Now laugh and grow fat…" He finished before going limp entirely.

With the only person that could tell him where the bomb was now dead, Raiden pulled out his explosive sensor to find that it was already going crazy. There was an active bomb right in the immediate vicinity, but he couldn't see it.

As a last ditch thought he pulled open Fatman's massive trench coat only to find an alarming thing; that the entire time he had been shooting at Fatman there had been explosives around him the entire time, packed into certain parts of his suit. If that had been active during the battle the absolute worst could have happened.

Without wasting another second, Raiden pulled out his coolant spray and quickly sprayed the detonator device, rendering it dead just like that.

He had to wait another second just in case something else would come out of left field at him, but nothing did, and Raiden fell to his knees in exhaustion with a sigh. His Codec having been on since he had frozen the C4 on his leg, both Rosemary and the Colonel had heard everything including his sigh of relief,_ "Good work Raiden."_ The Colonel told him, _"All of the bombs are neutralized. One of their main leverages is gone. That leaves-."_

"Colonel, Fatman didn't seem to know about the ransom demands." Raiden reported, having remembered that before they had ever even begun to fight. It was strange that one of the more famous orchestrators of the day's events didn't know about something like that.

"_Intentionally kept in the dark I'd say. He seemed to be coming from a very different place from the other terrorists. Don't worry about that right now, it's over. The President and a lot of hostages are still in danger. Focus on them. You haven't been to the Shell 1 Central Core yet. Try there."_

Raiden was about to respond before his Codec went off, "Ah, I have another call. Want me to take it?"

"_No, I'll go offline. Best to keep our presence unknown."_

The Colonel cut out, only for another familiar voice to cut in, _"How're you doing kid?"_

"Pliskin!" Raiden didn't want to sound so excited to hear that he was alive, but he was certain that given the circumstances it was as manly as it could have possibly been, "Is everything alright? How did you survive the blast in Shell 2?"

"_Could be better honestly. Looks like I was out cold for a while. I had a little help from a friend though, kept me covered to move while Pete was saving my ass. What about Fatman?"_

"Don't worry about him anymore." Raiden said, shooting a disdainful glance at the dead man's body, "How's Shell 2?"

"_Struts H and G are screwed."_

"What about the toxins?"

"_The what?"_

"If Big Shell blows up, the explosion is expected to produce massive amounts of toxins." How did he not know that? The SEALs had to have been briefed on an aspect that important. It was the biggest bit of leverage the terrorists had as a threat.

"_Never heard anything about that, but it looks like there's not much danger of that in any case. The central core of Shell 2 is starting to flood though. It's not going to be accessible for much longer at this rate."_

"What about the President and the hostages? We need to get them out of here now."

"_They weren't in Shell 2. They must be in Shell 1. It's too far to Manhattan for anyone not trained to do so to swim, and there aren't any lifeboats. That doesn't make any sense."_

No lifeboats? No lifeboats on a structure that was built directly in the middle of the ocean, 20 miles from shore. What was with this place? "So a chopper is our only extraction?"

"_Right. And it comes with a passenger limit. Intel has it that there are about thirty hostages. It'd take more than a single trip."_

"Can you even pilot a chopper?"

"_No, but I've got a gearhead with me. He's a good guy, I'll have to introduce you later. Now you go ahead and do your thing, I'll do mine."_

"The President is at the top of our priority list Pliskin."

"_Your orders, not mine. Later."_

"What?" Raiden said in disbelief, but the conversation had already been cut from the other side, "Pliskin? Damn it!" His second wind having been caught, Raiden immediately ran towards the stairs to begin making his way across the massive facility to the Shell 1 core when all of a sudden a ninja appeared from seemingly nowhere right in front of him. He pointed his gun at it and cursed as he would have to seemingly fight again, 'Where have I seen something like this before? My Shadow Moses VR simulations, right?'

Yeah, this was a Cyborg Ninja! Just like the one that had been Gray Fox! What was going on here?

"_You passed with flying colors."_ The ninja said in a distorted voice from behind the helmet mask.

"Identify yourself!" Raiden demanded. He was a little shell-shocked at the sight, but that wasn't enough to catch him off-guard.

"_I'm like you. I have no name."_ The ninja said as a sword was drawn and pointed at him. The visor of the mask flashed for a second, but Raiden couldn't see anything, _"You can call me whatever you like."_

He had heard that voice before though. He had gotten a surprise call to inform him of a sniper in his path that could have easily killed him when he was travelling on the open bridges between struts on the side of Shell 2. It helped him avoid getting possibly picked off and informed him that his detour was booby trapped with claymores, one of which helped him win his battle with Fatman, "…Mr. X?"

"_Hm. If you like."_ The ninja said, seemingly amused by him. It was enough to disengage the situation since the ninja put the sword back into the weapon's sheath, _"Come. Let's get out of the open. Follow me."_

Raiden warily moved with the Ninja until they were down the stairs on the underside of the heliport, shaded by it from the sun, "Are you with FOXHOUND too?"

The ninja stopped walking and turned to face him, _"Neither enemy nor friend. Just a messenger from the La-li-lu-le-lo."_ The ninja tapped the side of the facemask to send out a signal to call Raiden on his Codec even though they were face-to-face, _"This is safer I think. No eavesdroppers from the outside."_

Ah, he got it. Now he couldn't hear the ninja through the mask, but could through the Codec, "Why'd you contact me?"

"_I've been ordered to give you backup, including relaying necessary intel."_

"Ordered by whom?" There was no answer from the Cyborg Ninja, "Why won't you identify yourself?"

"_There is no need for you to know. You are not trusted to make such decisions if you think that you do. I'll tell you something you do need to know instead; the current location of the President. Or rather, the current location of the man that knows where the President is."_

"Who?"

"_A Secret Service agent named Ames currently being held with the other hostages. The head of the President's security detail, Ames has been fitted with the same type of VIP nanomachine system as the President. If you're within range you should be able to communicate."_

"There's no reason for me to believe any of this, you understand that right?" Raiden said, shaking his head in disbelief, "Why are you telling me this?"

"_I've already told you. And of course I understand that, but you also have no choice but to believe or do you have any other leads that I am unaware of? The hostages are all being held together with Ames in the first floor basement of the Shell 1 core, and it's more heavily guarded than any other section of the Big Shell. You have no chance of getting in unseen."_

Great. The worst possible idea in history would be to start a firefight around the hostages, even if he had a chance of winning in the most heavily guarded area in the entire facility to begin with. Raiden's woes were cut short when a uniform was thrown at his face, "One of the terrorists?"

"_I suggest you hurry. They have the nuke on their side."_

"They have a nuke?"

"_You didn't find their continued presence here strange? Even with the President as a hostage this is a manmade island. As big as it is there is no visible means of escape available to them. And they have the codes from the President already, so don't go hanging your hat on that."_

Great. The man from earlier that Vamp killed with half a handcuff was obviously carrying the briefcase, and they had the President himself, "Why would they even bring that to a place like this?"

"_Because the Big Shell is the farthest thing from a cleanup plant there is. Dead Cell didn't have to bring a nuke along with them, it was right here all along to begin with. Nothing in this affair is what it seems."_

A cover-up? But why?

XxX

(With Naruto)

"_Sniper Wolf really is beautiful Aniki. I can see why you did what you did with her. But does that mean you're a sucker for blondes like I wanted you to be after all?"_ Oh Naruto could try and be as silent as he wanted to be the entire time Catherine had been trying to talk with him now that things were calm. She knew he could hear her, _"I wonder what she could tell me about how big your-."_

"Alright, that's enough of that." Naruto said abruptly to interrupt Catherine before she could finish pushing his buttons, something that was evident when he could hear her laughing over the line. What happened to his sweet ten-year old little sister that picked him out of a stream? He liked to blame television, but most of it was probably his fault too.

Of course Wolf had no clue that he had been in a one-sided Codec conversation at the time and assumed that he was referring to his break, "Yes I would assume that it has been around ten minutes after all. That's long enough for someone like you to catch their breath."

Right. Back to the grindstone. No time to be hanging out with his beautiful sniper of a mentor, "Okay. Tell me where Olga is, because I know you know." If anyone out of every one of his contacts knew exactly where Olga Gurlukovich's current whereabouts would be, it would be the woman that had the bird's eye view of a lot of the Big Shell, "If nothing else, tell me a bit more about what's being built here."

Sniper Wolf nodded to the request. She could tell him those things, "It was developed by the U.S. Navy for whatever reasons the Patriots wanted it built for. I don't know why, I'm not privy to that much clearance. That's top of the food chain information. There is supposedly a substantial payload of nuclear warheads onboard, and its size absolutely dwarfs anything you or I have ever seen before."

That much had to be obvious if this _entire_ facility was just one big cover for its development and construction.

"_That's really scary. If that's true, then God that thing must be absolutely titanic. How do you destroy something like that?"_

And Naruto agreed. But there was another issue at hand, "How do you even use something like that? I had to wonder how anyone designed REX to move at all back when I saw it, and you're telling me the new one is big enough for the entire Big Shell?"

"Close your mouth little probie, you'll catch flies in it." Naruto glared half-heartedly at Wolf as she continued to speak, "It is an aquatic-based weapon, submersible. I would suggest that this is how it would manage to be mobile. I've never seen it though."

That sounded familiar. Kind of like the stupid thing he was sent to destroy two years ago that started most of this mess, but that thing wasn't the size of the freaking Big Shell though. Metal Gear RAY had been as big as Metal Gear REX, but as big as that was it wouldn't take a whole facility the size of a residential island to develop it.

"But you've never seen it?" Naruto asked as he started to stretch out in his preparation to get moving again, "Who has?"

"Olga, our former President George Sears, and the Gurlukovich Mercenaries carefully selected to be security for it." Wolf explained as she decided to get back on her scope and scan the area again, "They're called Arsenal Tengu and are supposed to be outfitted with special equipment for their task. Until everything is prepared no one else can see it. Not even Dead Cell members."

So to round things up…

Two years ago the Patriots framed Naruto and Snake by sinking a real oil tanker in the place of the fake one that they had been on with RAY when it escaped. Not only did this besmirch the names of both Naruto and Snake by convincing the world that these heroes from the Shadow Moses Incident were terrorists, they convinced the world that they were dead and effectively checked them out of the running. Naruto's pink slip from Dead Cell and the Patriots' puppetry as it were.

This was meant to set up a fake clean-up facility that would stand as a front for the construction of a brand new Metal Gear. So no one would question the constant shipping of materials to Big Shell even after its construction was complete, and they could mix in things needed for the new Metal Gear along with the things needed to keep the front up for the plant.

But the Tanker Incident in of itself debuted a new Metal Gear in Metal Gear RAY. It disappeared because of Ocelot's shifty ass actions, but they were already making a bigger and badder one? And he thought cell phones got upgraded so often that it was redundant… this was ridiculous, but infinitely more dangerous.

And now it had been hijacked and was currently being prepared for deployment by Naruto's pretty Russian friend with an entire army at her back, Naruto's old insane unit out for his blood and with no other reason to live, and the former President of the United States who was mad as heck and wasn't going to take it anymore.

"_Aniki, Snake's trying to call you. You wanna answer him?"_

"One minute Wolf." Naruto said as he put his hand to his ear, "Yeah Kitty, I'm putting him on through now. What do you want?"

"_There's someone that wants to fight you."_ Snake said in his usual gruff tone, _"Chinaman."_

It wasn't even a matter of having to think about it. Part of the reason he jumped at infiltrating Big Shell was to settle up with Dead Cell once and for all. He owed Colonel Jackson that much if nothing else, to face up to the group one last time, "Where?"

"_The site of your ultimate betrayal to Dead Cell. Wherever that is. Meryl wanted to keep you from fighting him, saying that there's enough self-destructive crap going on around here, but it's your call kid."_

"I appreciate it." Naruto said honestly. Best interests aside, he wasn't there for self-preservation purposes. He was there to settle some scores and keep his friends from holding the economic hub of the entire country captive, "Where are you going?"

"_To get a ride out of here for the hostages. We're all going to need to meet back up soon. I caught up with Otacon already, just don't get killed before we get a way out of here and find you."_

"I won't be very hard to find." Naruto said as he walked to the edge of the Shell 2 core rooftop and looked out over most of the facility, "I'm pretty sure you'll know what's happening. So are you ready to meet more of my old unit Kitty?"

"_All I can do is sit on my hands and watch you from where you guys left me for support, so I guess I am. I'll run the program and check into any black budget projects that fit the bill here, but I'm telling you there hasn't been anything on large-scale weapon development like a Metal Gear since the last time we checked. It's busywork if nothing else I guess."_

"_Right, you two do that. Good luck kid."_

Wolf watched Naruto talk to himself, figuring he had support elsewhere on this mission of his, but when he stood precariously on the edge of the building she gave him a questioning look, "Little probie what are you doing?"

"Man stuff." Naruto said cryptically before he slowly started leaning forward, "Later Wolf. Stay safe." Without another word he fell forward off of the roof, scaring her to death when she ran over to check on him. She stopped when her sharp eyes noticed the gleam of metal ninja wires against the side of the building that led to where they were anchored around a fluid tank.

"I hate it when he does that." Wolf griped aloud before returning to her previously scheduled job as the eye in the sky.

XxX

Naruto freefell to underneath the struts and the cores of Big Shell until his descent stopped and he cut his arm free of his ninja wire connected to the left arm of his suit, allowing him to land smoothly on the surface of the water that was still rather murky inside of the oil fence.

He knew where Chinaman wanted him to go. The site of his ultimate betrayal of Dead Cell was the exact site where the tanker had been sunken to frame him. As unfair as it was, he was technically right. Had Naruto never gone to try and help Olga keep her father out of Ocelot's schemes and plans he never would have been able to be framed and cut loose, and Dead Cell wouldn't have taken damage for his reputation as a loose cannon in the aftermath.

Down there it was just the two of them. Them and the wrecked pieces of Strut G, Strut H, and the Shell 1/Shell 2 connecting bridge floating on top of the water.

Even if he would have asked for Wolf's help there was no way she could do anything for him. She couldn't see down there. No one could. It was no man's land, in the center of the waters of the facility, far away from the oil fences.

The only reason this was the battle site was because nothing would bother them down there, not a single soul. They were hundreds of feet below any strut or core and both of them could walk on water due to their training backgrounds. It was just them, the murky waters, the debris, and the pillars.

"Chinaman!" Naruto shouted at the top of his lungs without fear of discovery, "I know you know I'm down here you racist git! You can sense me and you know it! Get your ass out here!"

A quiet sounding chant began to echo through the air, almost in an ethereal manner due to the echo effect of being on the exact underside of the Big Shell in its entirety. It was easy to follow, and Naruto walked on top of the water, past the damaged Shell 2 core and waited in the shadow.

Eventually his patience paid off and he turned around to see Chinaman, sans his trench coat to show his copious amount of large tattoos all over his body. Many of them were Chinese symbols that Naruto couldn't read, but the most prominent of the tattoos happened to be his dragon tattoo that ran down his entire body from his face.

"The smell of this place makes me sick." Chinaman said as he strode across the surface of the water as casually as Naruto did, "To me this water isn't contaminated with oil, it's contaminated with your treachery." Naruto just glared back at him in return, "I've always hated this country you know. I enjoyed being in Dead Cell, because our missions showed the superior, elitist American military just how inept and vulnerable they really were. And that's what this is to me." He said with a dark grin, "The Patriots believe that they are untouchable. They think their new superweapon will keep everything under their thumb, but what will they do when we take it and use it against them, and show them that just like their soldiers they are not as safe as they think they are?"

"So what's the big scheme here?" Naruto asked, pacing around on the water, "You get the new Metal Gear and then what? What do you do then? You're stuck here. You don't have a chance. There's no way off of this rusty piece of shit except as a bloated corpse in the water."

"We have the upper hand here." Chinaman pointed west towards Manhattan, "When the time comes and our new Metal Gear is active a nuke will be detonated high-altitude above that accursed city. The EMP pulse will bring Wall Street to a screeching halt, and the Patriots will be brought to light by our actions today. The smoke and mirrors will be blown away and they will be forced to show themselves to prevent everything they've built from crashing down."

Did they have any idea what that was going to do? That was going to destroy every electronic device in New York City. More than that, probably the entire Eastern Seaboard and deep into North America depending on how strong the nuclear weapon was, "You're going to fuck the world's economy…" Naruto started to say with a stunned look on his face, "…Just to smoke these assholes out?" Extreme wasn't it?

That was the only way it could possibly go down. If Wall Street crapped out the way it would if the entire east coast went dark for as long as it was going to the country was screwed, and the dominoes would only fall from there. He wanted the Patriots dead too, but there was such a thing as much too much, and this was it.

He didn't care about America that much, politics and military-wise anyway, but this was going beyond that. It was going to hurt far too many people, and it was going to ruin the world. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to economics as he was more of a fighter, but some things didn't need too much of an explanation.

"_That's completely absurd! They're going to set the world back to zero for this? Everything commercial is going to go out! Even a lot of military things are going to get worked over! This country's going to be totally naked!"_

"The King wants to remake this wretched country into its proper image." Chinaman said, speaking of George Sears, the ringleader of this escapade, "What it's supposed to be. What it tries to make itself out to be on the surface before people truly come here and are able to witness how rotten it is at its core. You cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs of course. It's just a means to an even greater end."

"No…" Naruto said, backing up a step as he shook his head, "No, no, no, no, no. It's not worth it. Not even close. Do you have any idea what the hell this is going to do? Do you even care? You're going to start a goddamn world war. Every country, every crackpot terrorist organization in the world, they're all going to smell the blood in the water and they're going to jump on the scraps of this country like jackals on raw meat. A Metal Gear, no matter how kickass it is, isn't a big enough ace in the hole to stop that!"

A power vacuum as big as the one that setting off an EMP over the East Coast of the U.S. would create wasn't going to be filled in without rivers and rivers of blood first.

"That won't be our problem." Chinaman assured Naruto, smirking at how unnerved the plan of action seemed to be making Naruto. The brat's hairs were probably standing up on the back of his neck, "I can assure you that the Metal Gear is more than enough to ensure our safety. The leadership of the new America will be safe no matter what, and we'll be nowhere near the blast when we set it off. And even if it isn't… remember that I don't care. I hate this country as it is to begin with."

Heh. It was almost funny. For all of the people outside of it that wished to destroy America, it seemed that the only people that really had the know-how to get the job done were the people that had actually sworn in the past to keep it safe and defend it. It would have been funny if it weren't so sad.

Because this was what living underneath a shadowy organization that controlled everything did. _Them_. The Patriots. Spending so much time controlling and using everyone until they had nothing useful left to provide them would provoke anyone into retaliating in the most serious manner possible. What was the point of it all?

Chinaman inhaled once deeply to break the silence below the Big Shell between himself and Naruto, "Saying all of this to someone that is about to die is liberating. It's like writing memoirs and then burying them so that no one can find them later. It's exciting." He slowly slid himself into a posture of Shaolin Kung Fu, readying himself for battle.

Naruto just stared at him before finally getting prepared to do the same, "You know, with all of the things that I've seen and had to deal with there's only one man in this world whose advice I've ever listened to and keep heeding even now. He told me that there are only two rules. And every time things start getting out of hand or nothing seems right I keep going back to what he told me."

"Really now?" Chinaman curled his fingers inward for a palm strike before smashing his hand on the surface of the water, "I hope that will give you some solace when you die by my hand!" The moment his hand struck the water it split a path directly toward Naruto who jumped directly over it at Chinaman, drawing his sword and slashing at him vertically.

The attack missed when Chinaman let himself sink underneath the ocean, letting Naruto slice the waves before he emerged a short distance away.

"Your little ninja tricks won't work Jap. You hold no advantage here!" Chinaman taunted with a smirk, "Your abilities pale in comparison to my own as Dead Cell's mystic!"

"Whatever you say jackass!" Naruto responded, quickly doling out shuriken to hurl at Chinaman who ducked and swayed his way around them. It was just a feint to give Naruto time to create clones and quickly surround Chinaman in a triangle pattern, "I don't care about that!"

Naruto and his two clones aimed their right arms at Chinaman in between the three of them and fired a rapid barrage of shots from the Solar Gun. Amid his laughter, Chinaman dropped back beneath the water again.

This was annoying. Chinaman was a former Navy SEALs swimmer and held the world record for the longest time spent underwater by a person. There wasn't much he could do from under there though, so it was a stalemate. Be that as it may, the last thing that Naruto needed was for this to turn into some kind of chess game. He had people to meet up with.

It seemed that bringing the fight to a grinding halt was the last thing Chinaman wanted as well, because underneath one of Naruto's clones the water exploded as if a mine had gone off beneath it, finishing it off.

'That's Chinaman's chi technique he blasts from his palms.' Naruto thought to himself, feeling the sensations his clone endured before it went off beneath him as well. He was tossed away and bounced off of the surface of the water before righting himself and looking around for any sign of his assailant, 'He's going to keep doing this.' Standing still was the worst possible move that Naruto could make at that moment and he and his remaining clone took off in a sprint just before another blast sprayed water everywhere where he had been standing previously.

He remained steps ahead as he kept dodging explosion after explosion, looking for a little island of sanctuary in the form of a wrecked chunk of building that remained in the water from Fatman's bomb that destroyed two entire struts. Upon reaching it, Naruto leaned over the side and stuck his hands directly into the water, channeling electricity through his body and into the immediate vicinity.

A cruel method of attack, but Naruto didn't care. It was way preferable to being attacked from underwater by an enemy he couldn't see. Chinaman had probably dove down to prevent him from reaching him in such a way as Naruto's budding control over electricity hadn't been a secret while he had been in Dead Cell. But the newfound proficiency he had over it was probably past what Chinaman had been expecting.

Forcing more chakra out of his body, electricity surged through the water with more power behind it than before. Even with his chakra split, Naruto had nothing but energy to burn in regards to his chakra supply and he'd make like a toaster in a bathtub until Chinaman came up floating face down. He couldn't stay down there forever, even if he could hold his breath longer than anyone else alive.

The edge belonged to him, and his clone was just lying in wait, SOCOM pistol ready to take a potshot at Chinaman the moment he surfaced.

Something surfaced soon thereafter, but it wasn't Chinaman. At least, not Chinaman by himself. A solid black dragon twenty feet in length emerged from the water, followed by Chinaman who stood back on the surface.

Chinaman's muscles were still tightening and loosening from almost being electrocuted, but it wasn't over yet, "Do you see now? The limits of my spiritual abilities? In the water I can animate my tattoo with my chi. Now kill him."

Upon his mental prompting, Naruto's clone began shooting at will at the dragon's head, hitting it over ten times and getting it to roar in anger before it sped through the water directly at Naruto's metal island, cutting its body through the top of the water like a razor.

Naruto dispelled his clone and bailed out off of the sanctuary as Chinaman sprinted his way and trailed behind his creation. The tattoo that had been on his body was no longer there, but this was not Naruto's concern as Chinaman drew close enough to begin battling him hand-to-hand.

At all costs Naruto had to avoid being stricken in the chest or head by Chinaman's flat palm, and that was his main concern. He'd take the kicks. The kicks didn't matter. He'd take them and deliver response punches and knees of his own due to their close proximity, but no palm strikes could land or else.

Naruto countered a low kick directed at his knee by raising his leg to parry it and managed to transfer that into a direct front kick right in Chinaman's face that knocked him back a few steps. Naruto drew his HF Blade immediately and sliced downward to rend Chinaman into two segments but only wound up slashing him down his torso from shoulder to opposite hip.

Naruto's body was splashed with Chinaman's blood, but that did nothing to deter him. This was to the death, they both knew it from the start and had made peace with that from the moment they had caught sight of one another.

Upon being cut, Chinaman spun backwards out of range of Naruto's reach as the young man continued to try and press his advantage, just managing to miss the subsequent strikes.

Beneath their feet, Chinaman's dragon that had come to life from his tattoo swam circles around them, as if it were a makeshift ring. One misstep from Naruto and it would do its worst and try to bite down on him with intent to kill. Staying close to Chinaman and dealing with his dangerous kung fu was how he could avoid dealing with the dragon. Even so he wished to be rid of it.

Creating a clone in the tight quarters he continued to fight with Chinaman while the clone reached its hands underneath the water and proceeded to discharge electricity.

In the middle of Naruto and Chinaman's duel of martial arts and swordplay the dragon suddenly writhed and crashed through the water, slamming into both and knocking them away from each other.

Whatever Naruto's clone had done before its sacrifice, it made the spiritual dragon rampage, and this was not acceptable to Chinaman who stood back on the surface of the water wearing the wounds of battle, "Ting wo shuou! Fúcóng! (Listen to me! Obey)!"

A slightly battered looking Naruto sheathed his sword and watched Chinaman climb up to stand on the back of the dragon before it rushed directly his way again, "Fuck this…" Naruto said as the dragon opened its maw and barreled right for him to devour him whole. The blue eyes of Naruto flickered red and he caught the lower and upper jaws of the mystical creature in his hands, failing to hold his ground as it drove him back without surcease, "A dragon? Really?" He said in a Kyuubi-charged gravelly voice.

"I've been waiting for this for years!" Chinaman yelled over the sound of crashing water. His laughter was cut off and morphed into cries of pain when electricity ripped through his body courtesy of Naruto. The direct contact he had with the dragon allowed him to shock it brutally, and Chinaman got his share of volts as well.

The dragon stopped swimming forward and shook its head violently to rid itself of Naruto, failing as that sucker had latched himself onto its mouth for all he was worth to bring it down. He wasn't going anywhere. This was clear, and as such both it and Chinaman dove back beneath the water, with Naruto in tow.

'He can drown here the way he should have two years ago!' Chinaman thought as he had his dragon dive deeper and deeper with Naruto.

Holding his breath tightly, Naruto let go of the dragon and dodged its lunging mouth to keep from being snapped up. He immediately started swimming for the surface but had to dodge another move from the dragon to try and kill him.

Naruto stopped trying to swim to escape and held out his open right hand. Chinaman figured that Naruto was about to foolishly try to use the Solar Gun underwater where it would be severely ineffective. Instead the current of the water began to shift around him, and his right hand was the focal point. The basis for his Rasengan was three different steps in using chakra; create rotation, add power, put them both together. This was merely the first one amplified for practical use.

In just a matter of moments a miniature whirlpool had formed and both Chinaman and his dragon found themselves caught up in it, 'What is this stupid Jap doing?' He was trapped, but that was of no real concern. He could find a way out as long as he could hold his breath, and that was no problem, 'I'll escape and then I'll-.' He gasped sharply before looking down and finding Naruto's HF Blade buried in his stomach with Naruto holding onto it at the hilt.

Under the cover of the wild and tumultuous current that he himself had created, Naruto allowed himself to be overpowered by it so that he could approach Chinaman and bring the battle to an end. He couldn't kill the dragon, but he could kill the man behind it and endeavored to do just that by any means necessary after he found himself underwater. Using his chakra to spin the water, he made an opening.

With a Dead Cell member stuck on his sword, Naruto began to swim back to the surface once again and took a deep breath of air once he reached it. He stood up out of the water with Chinaman still writhing on the end of his sword. Ignoring this, Naruto walked him back until he drove the tip of the blade into the side of one of the pillars that held up the Big Shell out of the ocean.

Chinaman tried to pull the sword out of his torso but he had no idea how to activate its high frequency vibration effect that let it cut through anything, thus it was stuck fast. He was effectively pinned to a metal pillar by a sword, "Gaaaaaah!"

Naruto just watched as from the water Chinaman's dragon tattoo was back to normal size and slithered its way back onto his body, settling back to mere body art after getting back into its proper place, "Why did you join the Navy SEALs to begin with if you hate America?"

Chinaman gave him a pained smile at his question. They had just waged a battle to the death and that was what he wanted to ask him, "Curious about something Rapture? Does it really matter anymore?"

"Yes." Naruto stated flatly, leaning forward on the handle of his blade, "Why even join the armed forces to start with?"

"I didn't always hate this country." Chinaman admitted, "I was sold as a child and my buyer brought me to America. Everything was supposed to be wonderful. America was the place where everyone of every race could live in one place and succeed, be happy. No one would be taken from their homes and sold while the entire country's government stood by and did nothing. All I found here was sickening discrimination, poverty, and in this city of New York it was rampant everywhere. I joined the Navy SEALs to prove I was better than those cowards. Those fools that claim to love liberty, but don't wish to see anyone different with it."

"Even then I hated this country. But I loved Dead Cell. It didn't matter how different we all were from each other; where we were from, what we were good at, our dreams and motivations. We all had our place. We worked together. In a twisted sort of way Dead Cell was the embodiment of the American ideal. Admit it… you didn't hate it there."

Naruto didn't hate it there amongst them. He got used to it. Even Fatman's stupid bomber pranks, even Old Boy's grandpa tendencies, even Chinaman's always surly attitude about everything. He actually got along with Vamp even if the Romanian man weirded him out, and Colonel Jackson was the coolest commanding officer Naruto had ever had.

"I didn't." Naruto said with a heartfelt frown, "I actually liked you guys after a while. But I had to do what I had to do. I had no idea it would have ended up the way it did." He gestured to the facility around them, "Who the hell would have possibly seen this coming?"

"A victim of circumstance." Chinaman said as his blood ran freely down the pillar in the form of a massive, spreading stain, "I shouldn't have survived the attempted liquidation of Dead Cell six months ago. There was always a contingency plan to handle us just in case we ever went rogue, but your lack of presence amongst us prompted them to pull more people off of the assignment than they would have used had you remained with us and they didn't adjust their strategy accordingly. We never did anything. And we had to pay because of suspicion that you brought upon us by your actions. They couldn't allow another FOXHOUND and Shadow Moses incident. This makes it two elite units that you destroyed from the inside out."

A hard punch from Naruto slammed against the metal pillar next to Chinaman's head and dented it deeply, "I'm sick of pleading my case. If that's what you believe I don't care anymore. I know who I am, I know what I did, and if you're still butthurt for getting played like a fiddle by the Patriots like I did you can take that feeling with you all the way to hell."

Chinaman just stared at Naruto will a dulcet expression until Naruto moved to pull his sword out of his body. Naruto had hit his liver and who knows what else when he twisted the blade in after initially stabbing him. He was a dead man, "Wait." Naruto stopped just before he would remove it, "Tell me what those rules of yours are."

Naruto's eyes looked down at the sword and then back up into Chinaman's eyes before speaking, "Like I said before; there are only two rules. Rule number one is that there are no rules."

"That doesn't make any sense." Chinaman muttered weakly as his eyes started to close, "There can't be two rules if your first rule is that there are no rules."

"The second rule is that you need to find something to hold onto. You need to find the one thing that you'll never compromise no matter what you do. The one thing that you'll always stick to unconditionally." Naruto said, shutting his eyes as he thought about it at that very moment, "My master said that this is the most important thing you can do, because when you accept that there aren't any rules you're capable of doing absolutely anything to get what you want… but this keeps you in some kind of control. It's a concept to keep your morals limited. And when you don't have anything like that you'll end up doing things like what Solidus Snake is going to do here today, or even worse you'll end up like the Patriots."

"I like that." Chinaman said as his body went limp, "I wonder who it is that told you that code of yours… and what your moral 'limiter' is." He said as his head sank down and he ceased moving altogether.

Naruto waited for several seconds before activating the high frequency vibration of the sword and pulling it out of Chinaman. He immediately dropped face down in the water and floated away, a red trail of blood forming in his wake, "Kazuhira Miller. And no matter what, it's about my people. My friends, my family. Without them I don't know what would have happened to me by now in this world. That means you too Kitty."

"_I love you too Aniki. And I'm sorry… because I'm pretty sure you meant that about Dead Cell too. Are you going to be okay with this?"_

Even though it came about originally because the Patriots wished to use him for their own ends and needed to keep an eye on him, he actually did wind up establishing his own set of bonds with Dead Cell. He wouldn't have wished this scenario on most of them at all... just Fatman.

How many of them were really that different from him?

"Yeah…" Naruto said as he dipped his sword in the water and swung it to clean it, "I did really like being in Dead Cell. If it hadn't been for the whole blackmail thing maybe I could have had fun there." And now two of them had died because of him, 'Why does it always end like this?'

"_Otacon and Snake called me to tell me they've got what they were after. I told them where you were. Go somewhere in sight and I'll lead them to you."_

"Okay sweetie." Naruto said as he walked from underneath the struts. Over everything he could hear the sound of a helicopter a ways away and figured that was what Catherine had been referring to and what Snake and Otacon had gone to procure. Not a bad idea to get the hostages out. He was soaked to the bone from his fight, and his footsteps echoed underneath the vast Big Shell.

As he walked out into the open per his sister's instructions he winced at the sensation of the sunlight hitting his eyes after fighting in the shadows of the plant. There was a metaphor in there somewhere.

* * *

><p><strong>Alright ladies and gents, chapter complete. Nothing really to say so I'll leave you with that. Later days.<strong>

**Kenchi out.**


	27. Fish In a Barrel

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. Weird huh? I could swear that I did. Maybe that was just a long, drawn out fever dream?

**Chapter 27: Fish in a Barrel**

* * *

><p>There wasn't really much more that Raiden could find himself surprised about when it came to things he ran into on this mission. From the outset he had been faced with a constant stream of ridiculousness that sometimes he wondered if he wasn't under the influence of some kind of psychotropic drug.<p>

Between the pressing situation he currently found himself in all alone, the enemies that he had been set to face, and the stakes that rested on the success of his assignment it _really_ seemed like a bad dream at some points.

Now was another one of those points.

Per the instructions of the Cyborg Ninja that had confronted him on the helipad after he had killed Fatman, Raiden managed to procure a disguise to fit in with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries and infiltrated the interior of the heavily guarded Shell 1 Core building in order to locate a man in the Secret Service amongst the hostages being held in a large meeting room, a man named Ames, in order to locate the President.

Upon doing so, he found out that everything spanning all the way back to the original sinking of the tanker years ago had been all planned out just to disguise the construction of the new Metal Gear model. The tour of Big Shell that had been the backdrop for the capture of the President and the hostages was just a PR cover for him checking on its progress.

And not only was there no demand for a 30 billion dollar ransom or any threat of eco-terrorist action, the entire plan all along was to detonate a nuke high-altitude over Manhattan and shut down the entire eastern half of the country and possibly more with an EMP pulse.

Along with that, apparently the President had to be helping the Sons of Liberty of his own free will since his vital signs were the key to activating everything that was needed for their plan to work.

The President of the United States conspiring against the country that he ran.

…That would have sounded like part of a stand-up comedian's set if it hadn't been so scarily real at the moment.

"The President is in Shell 2 core building." The tied up Ames said, eyes peering around suspiciously as they spoke in hushed tones. Luckily since Raiden was dressed to the nines as a Gurlukovich Merc, the rest of them didn't feel the need to stray closer in their patrols, "Take care of him before they get what they need from him to launch the nuke!"

"Take care of him?"

"…It doesn't matter what you have to do if he's betrayed us. If they can set that thing off, we all lose. Snake won't hesitate for a second to use what he gets."

Well that just took things to a whole new level of unnerving. The fact that he was basically being forgiven in advance for perhaps having to kill the President by someone that was supposed to be sworn to do everything in their power to protect the man no matter what. Oath bound. He wanted to ask more questions, to find out more about what was going on. Earlier Ames said that they worked for the same people, the 'la-li-lu-le-lo'. What the hell was that?

He never got to ask anything as the jangling of spurs caught both of their attention. The telltale sign of Revolver Ocelot and his unmistakable bootsteps as he strode directly for them, nonchalantly whistling an American Western tune.

"Ocelot is coming." Ames said in a bit of a panic, "Pick up your AK." Raiden quickly did so and tried to make it look as if he were threatening Ames to behave by the time Ocelot reached the two of them.

Of all of the hostages, Ames was the only one who wasn't gagged and didn't have his eyes covered like the rest. Even if Ocelot had been a dull one, no one was fool enough to ignore that, "What do you think you're doing?"

Quick on his feet so to speak, Ames came up with an excuse. Anything to keep Raiden from talking because he doubted that the young man knew Russian or could pull a convincing accent in English, "I asked him to remove the gag and blindfold. I'm ill, you see."

Ocelot just stared down at him before a smirk grew on his mustached face, "…I always knew that the DIA turned out second-rate liars." He said accusingly, much to Raiden's silent confusion. He was told that Ames was Secret Service by the intel from his higher-ups, nothing about the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).

"W-What are you talking about?" He hid it well, but it was evident that it was a stammer of nerves that Ocelot put an end to with a mere raising of his hand.

"No need for denials." He communicated smoothly and calmly, "We know what you are Colonel Ames." He bent down almost as if he wanted to look Ames in the eye while he broke him without even using his normal interrogation tactics, "_They_ knew that the President was going to betray them, so they sent you in to keep tabs on him. Correct?" Ocelot asked as he pulled one of his revolvers from the holster, "Sorry Colonel. You failed to carry out your duties."

There was a bead of sweat trailing down Ames' face, but he kept a stiff poker face regardless, "You'll never escape the la-li-lu-le-lo." He said with complete belief in his words. He sounded like a man that had begrudgingly accepted this fact a long, long time ago.

"Is that so?" Ocelot said, slowly grinning as he lifted his pistol to fire at Ames. But before he could execute the man, Ames began convulsing in pain where he had been bound and sitting on the floor, "What the-?"

Ames fell over as his eyes started bulging out from agony. Somehow though, he still managed to worm his way to his knees where he looked at Raiden with betrayal in his eyes, "You… you tricked me!" What? What the hell did Raiden do? He didn't even know what was happening, "I understand now…" He turned his panicking gaze at the nearby Russian gunslinger who still had his gun pointed at him, "…Ocelot… you…"

He never finished his accusation before he slumped forward on the floor, dead.

Raiden's initial reaction was to get down and check him for a pulse to see if there was anything he could do, but he had to stop himself mid-move. He was still in disguise, and Ocelot didn't seem to give a damn that Ames had just died. Why would a no-name subordinate care?

"You. Which team are you with?" Shit. Too late, "Show me your face." Another higher-ranking Gurlukovich Mercenary came and pointed his AK at Raiden once the voice of Ocelot carried over to more people, "Is he on your team?"

"No, he's not one of mine." Ocelot narrowed his eyes and gestured with his pistol for the man holding Raiden at gunpoint to make a move. Without a second to waste, he stepped forward and pulled the balaclava from his head, officially blowing his cover for good.

Ocelot seemed neither surprised nor angry at meeting the intruder, "Hm, we meet at last." His tone was so smug, as if he had all of the cards and he knew it. Gritting his teeth, Raiden wracked his brain for a move to make as Ocelot lifted his gun to aim at his face.

The brain-bending conundrum was woefully unnecessary as he wound up being saved without doing a thing. From the rafters of the meeting hall dropped the Cyborg Ninja from before, lowering the deadly looking sword that they carried right on Ocelot's arm at the left elbow.

Unfortunately, Ocelot had apparently been a star player in this role before and like lightning drew his arm back to avoid losing it for the second time.

Undeterred, in one fluid motion the ninja brought the sword to the side and stabbed Raiden's hostage-taker in the chest, killing him. By now more soldiers had moved nearby and immediately opened fire on the freaky Cyborg Ninja only for the bullets to be deflected with absurdly fast sword strokes.

'That kind of skill…' Raiden thought to himself as he watched it all transpire. He was being protected, but the deflected bullets weren't even hitting the numerous hostages littered nearby in various places, 'It's impossible. Those are automatic weapons!'

"Hold your fire!" Ocelot barked authoritatively, "We need those hostages alive! Don't risk any of your strays hitting them!"

"_Hurry! Get away!"_ The ninja ordered to Raiden now that things seemed to be at a standoff. Raiden didn't have the desire nor the need to be a man of valor and stay to fight. He had a mission to do, thus he quickly used the opening given to him to take off and escape.

Ocelot meanwhile had flashbacks to the incident four years ago that left him with the loss of an arm to begin with, "You? But you died!" One soldier turned to fire at the escaping Raiden who was climbing the stairs to leave, and Ocelot turned to do the same, but the ninja used the break in focus to move behind to cover him and protect him on his way out, "Grr…"

Once again, Raiden didn't stick around to deal with anything much longer. He had to get away from there and to Shell 2 somehow.

XxX

(With Naruto – Shell 1 – Strut H Helipad – Aboard Commandeered Kasatka)

"I have to ask, do you ever have a mission where you don't almost get killed?" Otacon asked as he sat behind the controls of the Russian helicopter that Snake had stolen for him. Turning his head toward the back he got a look at Naruto who was laying out in the seat with an arm over his eyes. There was a wry smile on the stubble-covered face of the brown-haired genius as he adjusted his glasses, "This is the third time in an hour isn't it?"

A frown crossed Naruto's face as he continued to cover his eyes, "Three… that seems a little much." He said in thought to himself before abruptly sitting up and shouting accusatorily, "Oh come on, you're counting the fight with Old Boy and the explosion after it was over as separate things aren't you? Bullshit, no, you better lump that together!"

The short reverie was interrupted when Snake banged on the hull of the helicopter from outside and hopped into the cargo portion of the aircraft where Naruto was in, "We've got to go meet up with the Raiden guy. Go now." He said as his eyes darted to the stairs of the helipad.

Otacon immediately got to work on trying to get the chopper off the helipad while Naruto stared at Snake suspiciously, "…What did you do?" Before Snake could answer or try to deflect any accusations, a small squad of Gurlukovich Mercenaries ran up the stairs that Snake had just ascended and moved forward to open fire on the chopper, "Damn it Snake!" Naruto yelled as he jumped up and immediately started blocking bullets with his sword.

"Get this thing off the ground and head that way!" Snake told Otacon, gesturing in the direction of indication. As Snake leaned over his seat and shoulder, Otacon nodded and did his best to get the helicopter into the air while their younger ally was busy blocking bullets, "Keep it up kid!"

"Kiss my ass! You brought this evil on me!" Naruto wasn't a substitute for bulletproof siding, and he didn't have cyborg body enhancements to allow him to see the bullets he was blocking. Eventually they lifted off and moved out of the aiming sight of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries to an entire other segment of Big Shell.

As they moved through the skies past strut after strut they eventually caught sight of a figure skulking out of the shadows of one of the buildings connected to a multi-leveled bridge with stairs, and multiple vats and pipes on it and running along it respectively.

"Right there." Snake indicated, pointing out the white-haired young man in the black skeletal-looking suit. He looked like he'd been put through the ringer already. Snake waved to him and got a wave back from the bridge, "Alright, let's put this thing down somewhere where he can get to us easily."

XxX

Raiden had never been so happy to see a Russian helicopter in his entire life. Truthfully that had been the first time he'd ever seen a Russian helicopter in the field, but that didn't matter. Finally he had some help that he knew would have his back. All he had to do was get to them and things would start looking up.

But the feeling of another presence in the area directed his attention to the other end of the bridge where he saw a thick grey-haired man in a black trench coat leaning against the wall leading to the interior of the adjacent strut, "I've been waiting for you." The man said, "Messenger from the Patriots."

There was that thing again. Patriots. What the hell? It was getting old, "So you're the boss around here?"

'Where do I know him from?' The thoughts of the grey-haired man had to be put aside as his prey had asked him a question, "No, not just around here. I'm the boss to surpass Big Boss himself-." He stepped out with a smirk, revealing his bearded face, "-Solid Snake."

"That is NOT Solid Snake!"

Over the sound of helicopter blades and engine, the voice of the man on it was still clearly discernable enough to catch the attention of both men on the bridge. One of whom glared up at the figure inside of it, still smirking challengingly, "What a pleasant surprise… brother. Don't tell me you've forgotten me Snake."

"Save it. You're no brother of mine." Snake said with a heated look on his face, "Raiden take cover!" Without wasting another second, Snake opened fire on his imposter with his rifle, but he was so fast. Inhumanly fast. Able to dodge his shots in a straight line, running down a flight of stairs and out into the open with ease.

The shots managed to trigger an explosion which the man lost his trench coat in, and the answer as to how he was able to do such a thing became clear.

'Shit. An exoskeleton suit.' Not deterred by this, Snake reloaded and took aim again before firing, "Stop impersonating _him_!"

Only taking care to cover his head, the man used the arm of his suit to block the bullets from hitting his only clear vital spot, "Brother, I'm a whole different game from Liquid." His entire body tensed up as he seemed to be focusing harshly before the muscles on his suit expanded, bulking him up inexplicably.

Switching tactics, Snake loaded a grenade into the launcher before shooting it right at him, but the enemy jumped into the air high enough to avoid the explosion, landing on the thick pipe lining the side of the bridge that was now on fire.

"Is that the best you can do Snake?" He taunted from below only to have to dive to the side again when Snake shot another grenade at him. What looked to be a fall to his death was prevented by a Harrier that had been in wait underneath the facility when he had set this little ambush for Raiden, "There's only room for one Big Boss!" He said as he got down into the cockpit once the pilot opened it for him.

Using this time allotted to him, Otacon turned the helicopter around as fast as he could go as the missiles of the Harrier locked on to them. Luckily the buildings that comprised the Big Shell got in the way and blocked the first salvo, allowing them to get some space between them.

Not deterred by this chance happening, the Harrier turned in its own direction and took off around the other building to get the distance to lay in some speed runs.

"Crap." Snake said, a bead of sweat rolling down his face, "That's the Harrier that used to be on Strut H's helipad." Turning to Naruto who had been getting thrown around in the backseat ever since Snake had Otacon whip them around to fight, he gave an expectant look, "Well?"

"Well what?" Naruto said as he tried to push his way through the cargo hold to the front seats, "You seriously want _me_ to do something about this? It's a goddamn Harrier jet. I've got a pistol and a submachine gun. What do you think I can do from here?"

"…I shot down a chopper with Stinger missiles stuck on a rooftop." Snake said, gesturing to the missile launcher kit in the cargo hold with them, "You've got this. Go for it."

"I'm inside the chopper same as you!" In response to that, Otacon lowered the aircraft enough for someone like Naruto to hop out safely, "You're lucky I'm only doing this because I hate all of the U.S. Presidents." He said as he grabbed the Stinger kit and jumped out, watching the Harrier get some mobility to make itself a hard target, "I plan on beating both of your asses after this is over!"

What he said probably fell on deaf ears, because the Harrier came screaming in taking shots at them with its guns, forcing Naruto to move as the Kasatka made itself scarce. With a deep roll he made it back to his feet as he searched the skies for any sign of the plane.

'Come on, that thing is huge! Where the hell could it have gone so fast?' The sound of boosters filled his ears as the Harrier slowly lifted itself over the side of Naruto's building. Nose facing him as if it were staring him down, "…Hey there Mr. President." Naruto said, wondering how fast those missiles flew and if he could move far enough out of the blast radius of one before it hit the roof somewhere.

"_Hello Rapture."_ Came a voice with an Eastern European accent to it through the plane's audio system.

"Vamp?" There was only one person that would call him that who had such an accent, "Is that you?"

"_Yes. I was wondering when it would be my turn to see you after you finished off Old Boy… but I assumed Chinaman would get you first."_

"He tried, and he got really close too." Naruto said, keeping in mind that he was conversing with a gigantic death machine that long since should have opened fire on him. And him with nothing up there to substitute with as well? This should have been over, "I killed him. He's floating down there somewhere under Big Shell. Now why are you in the Harrier?"

"_I'm piloting while King does his best to kill all of you."_

"Why isn't he shooting me yet?"

"_He's waiting for the Kasatka to come back around to foolishly try to save you so we can destroy it. We can kill you anytime as long as you're up here. You've nowhere to go and nowhere to hide."_

Well that was sensible. Yes, Naruto was holding a Stinger, but they'd riddle him with bullets before he could even try to take aim, "Well hell then." He said as he put his hands up, "I surrender. I want to talk to Olga anyway."

"…_Really? You're just giving up?"_ That didn't sound right. Rapture didn't quit at anything.

Naruto scoffed at the thought, "No. I said I want to talk to Olga and I can't find her. That's the only reason I'm doing this, it's just that you're getting something out of it too." The chance to torture him for several hours before he actually got to speak with the woman, "Now let me talk to your boss so I can discuss terms of surrender."

It took a moment within the cockpit, but eventually Naruto heard the voice of former U.S. President George Sears, _"My apologies, but the Sons of Liberty are not in the business of taking prisoners."_

"Bullshit! You've got thirty of them around here somewhere!"

"_Those are hostages. There's a difference."_

"I HATE politicians!" Naruto growled out, still holding his hands up.

"_If you'll tell me what you wanted to say to her I'll relay the message… posthumously of course."_

Once again, Naruto just stared the Harrier down, wishing that he could look into the eyes of either Vamp or Sears while he spoke, "I'll save it for when I see her. But I do have something to say to you. Look at Vamp, now back to me, back to Vamp, back to me. I am not Vamp, I'm flipping you off. Look at the horizon, back to me. Where'd the Stinger go? It's gone! I threw it! And there's not a damn thing you can do about it!"

So he threw the only weapon he had in his hands away. Big deal. That just made him easier to kill.

Before any response could be given by Sears, the Harrier was rocked from behind and the side by the shot of a missile, 'What?' Looking over to the side angle, Sears saw Raiden holding the smoking Stinger kit with a smirk on his face as he loaded another missile, _"Up Vamp, up!"_ That bastard! The Kasatka never even came back around for him, 'I should have shot that little…'

"_Right away King."_ Vamp lifted the Harrier higher and away from Raiden before he looked back down at the rooftop and saw the absence of Naruto, 'Where did he go? He didn't jump. There's no way.' Rapture was not insane. He was tough, but he could never survive such a fall into the water below.

Right then the systems of the plane started going nuts and quickly failing, _"What the hell is going on?"_

On the exterior of the Harrier, Naruto stuck himself to the bottom and stabbed his HF Blade into the hull before charging as much electricity into it as he could, "Die-die-die-die-die-die-die!" The moment he heard the boosters start to kick on and try rising higher he started pumping every bit of juice he had into the aircraft before it got to be too dangerous to be any higher and he jumped off.

The boosters and every other piece of equipment on the plane died as electricity continued to course through it and it fell from the sky, busting straight through the center of the bridge and into the water below. Raiden had to dive for dear life to avoid going down with a large portion of the bridge that was taken out.

Naruto managed to land by stabbing his sword into the side of a building, dragging for a ways before he stopped and threw his free hand into the air as his feet stuck to the wall, "Yes! I did it! I'm the best! Fuck you Snake! Take your pussy chopper win and shove it! I shot down a Harrier all by myself in broad daylight with a sword!"

"Hey, I'm right here!" Raiden yelled up at Naruto from their half of the completely destroyed bridge, "I hit the thing with a missile first."

"And it stayed in the air." Naruto argued, dropping down onto the metal structure as he sheathed his sword, "You shot it once. I killed it. I don't even know you anyway." So this was the guy that snuck in behind them? This was the Raiden guy, 'He doesn't look so tough, but then again he killed Fatman and survived Vamp. That has to count for something.'

The sizing up was not merely one sided, as Raiden on the other hand took a moment to try and gauge just what he could about Naruto, 'If Plisken really is Solid Snake and his partner really is Otacon, who would this be? Philanthropy wasn't credited as anything more than a two-man operation.' Naruto was a mysterious element as far as he was concerned.

Meet and greet time had to wait for later though as a guttural roar sounded out through the air, splitting the placid sounds of crackling flames and water.

From the water, a mammoth aquatic metal monster flew, holding the previously shot down Harrier within its jaws as it soared through the air, "No…" Naruto said to himself, "No, no, no, damn it!" He knew that damn thing anywhere. Metal Gear RAY. The Metal Gear from the tanker that all this mess had started over.

The deranged bastard that had come up with the original theory behind bipedal tanks with armed with three-quarters of an armory within them and nuclear capabilities needed to burn in hell for all of the trouble he had caused the world over the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st. Burn. In. Hell.

'Metal Gear!' Raiden shouted in his mind, pointing his Stinger down over the bridge at the water to take aim. He had no idea what to do with it, but high-explosives solved the problem of how to kill everything, and it would definitely work here. At least until Naruto grabbed him by one of his arms and forced him into a run along with him, "What are you doing?"

Apparently shooting RAY from out in the open wasn't the best idea as the moment it surfaced from the water it unleashed several salvos of cluster bombs into the air about to bombard them all from below. Such a dangerous barrage it was, even the nearby hovering Kasatka took a blast before Otacon managed to maneuver it out of harm's way. Unfortunately this also took them away from Naruto and Raiden, effectively splitting them all up once again.

"Shut up and help me jump!" Raiden was strong, and Naruto could see that he was infinitely more athletic than Snake. He was closer to him in that regard. Very close, if he didn't possess a few advantages even. And that meant they had a chance to dodge it all.

Somehow Raiden got the picture and started moving in stride with Naruto as they sped toward the edge of the broken and fragmented bridge. What other choice did he have with fiery death from above being released and falling toward them, "We can't make that jump, even if we doubled up our leg strength!"

"Not in one bound no, that's why we're aiming for parts we can both kick off of! We can do it!"

Raiden didn't know what it was that made this blond-haired person so confident that they could platform jump off of raised metal sheets and segmented support beams dozens of yards across like they were in some sick game of Crash Bandicoot, but whatever it was he definitely could use some of it.

XxX

(Shell 2 – Strut J – Power Plant)

The bombs that had rocked the second shell and had taken out Struts G and H had also damaged other areas of the facility as well. Damn Fatman, the idiot bomber. Luckily, Strut J hadn't suffered nearly as much. Inside of the transformer room sparks fell from the ceiling all over as Olga's Gurlukovich Mercenaries finished cleaning up the last dregs of Old Boy's Fallschirmjäger.

What parts of them Naruto left after completely blowing through over thirty heavily armed special-forces soldiers in less than two minutes.

'The remnants of Old Boy's unit will be outfitted as Arsenal Tengu so at least there will still be a use for them.' Olga thought to herself as a random crackle from the damaged ceiling wires caught her attention. Her gaze lingered on the falling electric sparks with an unreadable expression in her face, "Where are you Uzumaki?" She muttered to herself under her breath in Russian.

"All Rapture knows how to do is take things from this world." A feminine voice said from behind her at the two-story control point. It wasn't Wolf, she wouldn't have said anything sounding so blue. It wasn't Meryl, because her voice was far more youthful sounding. The content of the words and the melancholy tint to the voice let on that it was Fortune.

Olga did her best to mask her surprise at the fact that someone else other than her men had gotten that deep within Strut J without someone warning her by radio first, unless she had been there before she entered the power plant room, which actually made her mad. It upset her true enough, but there wasn't much about that day that was not upsetting her truthfully.

Taking Olga's silence as a reason to continue, Fortune walked around the railing and down the stairs to the ground level of the power plant, "Do you know how he wound up getting his name in Dead Cell?" She asked, getting no answer, "I was told it was because he entered every battle he fought, took the majority of his missions, with a bright expression on his face. Often with a smile. He was a favorite of his commanding officer, my husband, who gave him his codename Rapture."

'Sounds apropos…' She hadn't looked him in the eye in two years, but that sounded like the Naruto she remembered from the last time they had met just before everything had gone to hell on the tanker. So agonizingly dangerous, how his attitude could disarm you if you didn't know better.

"He was a reckless man with no allegiance to the unit." Fortune continued to say, her voice gaining an edge to it as her grip, "And because of him and his own ignorance to the repercussions of his loose cannon side-dealings he took everything from me in one night… and you suffered as well from the exact same incident didn't you?"

Yes, but Olga was the only reason he wound up on that tanker. She asked him to help her. To take Metal Gear RAY away before her father could do something foolish. Whether it was his fault that her father was killed, that Fortune's father was killed and her husband was imprisoned, it was Olga that had initially dispatched him to New York.

It was a good thing her back was turned because she was gnashing her teeth at Fortune's unintentional prodding. She meant well and was trying to establish some sort of a rapport between the two of them, trying to look past the fact that the basis of what they had in common was mostly because her father planned to rip off RAY from her father and both of them wound up catching the worst-case scenario in the end. It was amicable honestly, but Olga was not in the mood for it whatsoever.

"Please don't try to compare the two of us based off of Naruto Uzumaki or Rapture, whatever you wish to refer to him as." Olga said, finally finding her voice calm enough to speak, "Dead Cell's issues with him are not my own." What was left of Dead Cell anyway, because they were three down, and only Fortune and Vamp were left, "When I come across him I will deal with him."

"And what makes you think you'll find him before I kill him or Solid Snake?"

Olga turned to look over her shoulder before walking away, a cryptically bored look on her face as she did so, "Every time one of your Dead Cell members has come across him it has been because he's chosen to come forward. You won't see him unless he wants to see you, and there's no reason for that because he does not know you."

"And he knows you?"

The Russian mercenary leader didn't say another word before leaving the power plant room where she found some company leaning against the wall right outside, "Wolf." Olga greeted one of her favored soldiers gently, "Any news?"

"Well, Solidus lost the Harrier." The buxom sniper stated with something of a smug smile on her lips as Olga seemed to blink in a shocked manner at that touch of information, "Yes, apparently the Solidus philosophy on there being no 'kill' like 'overkill' doesn't apply with my little probie."

Olga still stood there trying to process what she had just heard, "Solidus lost the Harrier? As in 'shot down' lost?"

"'Stabbed and electrocuted down' would be a more accurate statement, but yes."

"…He lost the Harrier to someone on foot?"

"And his left eye from the crash. He's still alive, as is Vamp who was piloting, but… I would avoid him for the time being."

Olga had to make a concerted effort to fight her mouth muscles twitching into something of an amused smile. What a morbid thing to be entertained by. It was a good thing the man was probably stewing and bitching with the medics on hand at the moment because she probably couldn't face him directly without showing some dark mirth.

"He did always wish to be like Saladin." Wolf said airily, dismissing Solidus and his wounds. She had a large dislike for the man due to how he wished to be a copy of Big Boss, "Now he looks more like him than ever. He lost the wrong eye though."

"Uzumaki is such a cruel fighter even if he's unaware of it." Olga commented, "If he doesn't kill you he'll leave his mark in victory." She said, tracing the scar that spanned her face diagonally before stopping and looking at Wolf intently, "What will you do when the time comes?"

All traces of fun and humor were gone from Wolf's blue eyes by this point, "I didn't tell him where to find you earlier when he came to me. Nor did I inform you of the fact that I met with him at all."

Yes, from the look on Olga's face she was not pleased with that at all, but Wolf didn't care. She wouldn't do a thing to her in return. Wolf was too important, "And why are you telling me this now when it has absolutely no relevance?" In other words, 'Why the hell didn't you call me sooner?'

"I'm not the only one. All of us have. Meryl, Johnny, and myself. You're the only one whose face he hasn't seen yet." She made a point of stressing that he hadn't seen her face of all things, "We all agree that this is between you and him. We will not take sides… right up until the bitter end."

"That's fine." Olga claimed, hands on her hips as she walked away, "I never said that you had to. I never even wanted any of you to come here with me. It's best if you all just stay away."

"If you're going to do it and you win… at least make sure that you face him before you finish it."

"I won't be able to ambush him. I plan on battling him head-on."

"That's not what I meant and you know it." Olga stopped before she reached the end of the hallway when she heard Wolf address her so sternly. She never seemed to be anything more than easygoing, but she seemed deadly serious about this, "Have the courage to let him know who killed him if it comes to that."

She didn't turn around. She just kept on moving forward, "When. You mean when it comes to that." Olga didn't confirm whether she would do so or not. And all Wolf could do was sigh. It had been out of her hands and the hands of anyone else that could stop it for a long time.

XxX

(With Naruto – Shell 2 – Strut L/Shell 2 Core Bridge)

"This has got to be some kind of record." Naruto said to himself as he and Raiden sat out in a crawlspace under the bridge. When it was built it was created for maintenance reasons in case one of the pipes or thick wires were damaged, but it was now being used as a hiding place for one to catch their breath.

Catherine was such a wonderful girl to get all of the little nooks and crannies a guy like Naruto could take advantage of.

Naruto was laying on his back looking at the close-by underside of the bridge "I took a rest about an hour ago and I'm technically taking another one here. Some kind of record." Leaning up on his elbows he looked over at Raiden who was on his hands and knees breathing quite heavily, "You alright over there?"

"Yeah, fine." And he was. He just wasn't used to sprinting the equivalent of two miles when one accounted for all of the turns, hallways, and such that went into Big Shell. Seriously, forget Manhattan, the facility had to be half the size of Manhattan, "At least I think I learned part of a new trick." Oh, and that _also_ included the jumping on narrow and precarious pieces of open-air metal that used to be a bridge.

Now that put a grin on Naruto's face, for probably the first time in at least a month. Raiden hadn't been that far off from learning how to properly jump for elevated transportation before Naruto had 'coaxed' him into doing it to save their tails from being blown to hell by Metal Gear RAY, "Well we lost RAY, so hey… silver lining."

"_Wow… he's really cute Aniki."_ Naruto could hear Catherine's voice through their constant Codec connection and he almost rolled his eyes at the first thing she'd said since he linked up with Snake and Otacon at the Kasatka, _"I thought this mission would just be full of fugly guys, 'cause that's all I've seen so far."_

"Down girl…" Naruto muttered low enough for Raiden to miss it, "I didn't know you were into pretty boys."

"_A pretty boy that can fight."_ Catherine amended, _"Same as you. It's probably attached to the brother complex."_ She jested over the line.

"I'm not a pretty boy." Naruto said with a frown before shaking his head, "Ugh, why are we talking about this now anyway? What about Snake and Otacon? What happened to the Kasatka? Talk to me here kitten."

"_Okay, okay, I was just stalling until I could patch into pretty boy's frequency so he can hear this too. You want that right? I haven't done it yet if you don't."_

"It'll save me from having to parrot everything you say." Naruto reasoned with himself and his sister, "Go ahead."

Finally starting to catch his breath, Raiden got a bit of a surprise when he got a call on his own Codec from an unknown frequency. He looked over at Naruto who nodded and made a gesture with his hand signifying that such a thin was supposed to happen. With a raised eyebrow, Raiden touched at his ear to answer, "Uh, hello?"

"_Hi. I'm Catherine; distance support for Naruto, Snake, and Otacon. Nice to meet you."_

Raiden looked over at Naruto who merely mouthed out the words 'little sister' before he spoke up, "I wish you'd have used my Dead Cell codename Kitty, but I guess it doesn't really matter." Seriously, the only vulnerable loved one he had was already in deep with him, so what difference did it make?

"You're in Dead Cell?" Raiden asked, tensing up defensively. He'd more than had his fill of Dead Cell. All of them had been freaky.

Speaking of which, while they were running across the remnants of that bridge he swore he could see that Vamp person running on the surface of the water below. What the hell? As if seeing him run across water like it was land wasn't enough, he shot that fucker in the head back when he had been getting rid of Fatman's bombs.

"_Aniki used to be, but he was kicked out after getting framed for taking part in sinking the tanker here. Kind of stupid since he was blackmailed into joining them to begin with."_

'Wait. Naruto. That's the name of one of the conspirators with Solid Snake's Philanthropy. And he was involved in the Shadow Moses Incident as well!' And that meant, "So Plisken really is Snake! The real Solid Snake! But I thought both of you were dead!"

"_Nope."_

"Nope."

The cavalier and dismissive way Naruto referred to himself and working with a legend in Snake was the last tick in Raiden's patience and nerves that had been dwindling all day long, "Why would any of you want to do this? I'm here because I have to be, I was assigned! What makes any sane person want to be a part of something like this?"

The first response that sprang to Naruto's mind was to point out that he wasn't particularly sane, but he could definitely see why Raiden would think like that, "There's more to this than any of us know. And people I know are in serious trouble here. I was free, allowed to disappear, but I don't want to turn into some kind of despicable person that would turn my back on the people that I care about just to save my own skin."

Raiden wanted to ask him just what he meant, but the look in Naruto's eyes told him that he wasn't going to get anything significant in that regard out of him. In the worst case scenario he would upset him, and Naruto didn't seem to be the kind of person he wanted to upset just because he had personal questions.

God knows he had his own personal demons he wanted kept to himself.

He had so much he wanted to ask, about how they survived the tanker sinking, about how the hell Naruto learned how to do things like what he had displayed before, about the Cyborg Ninja he had run across and if they were connected as well.

Catherine eloquated it better than her brother could have, _"Snake would say that we fight because we have a responsibility to the future generations to rid the world of Metal Gear, as a way of correcting the mistakes we've made as a species. You've already heard Aniki's reason. I'm just here because I love my brother, and I refuse to let him get himself killed with no one caring for him."_

"She sounds like my girlfriend." Raiden mumbled to himself, making a note to call Rosemary as soon as he was done there to let her know he was alright, "Philanthropy is an anti-Metal Gear organization, so I assume you know about the new model being developed here."

He couldn't afford to let himself be star-struck. Philanthropy were still basically terrorists the way they went about achieving their goals, even if they had reasonable goals.

"Yep." Naruto confirmed, sitting up from his back with his sheathed sword posted on the ground, "But each of the three of us, me, Snake, and Otacon, we've all got a personal stake in this. Snake wants the Metal Gear taken out. I told you I came here for others. Otacon came here because his sister's being held in the Big Shell."

"This isn't a place to settle your scores and ease your mind. This is a military mission!"

"I'm sure you have a point somewhere, but I just can't bring myself to care enough to see it."

Both Naruto and Raiden stared each other down, and neither particularly felt the need to falter in the face of the other. It was deadly silent other than the seagulls and the waves below. But Naruto soon had enough. Kicking Raiden out of the crawlspace and down into the water for getting in his face wasn't going to help anything he was there to do, "The President's in the Shell 2 Core right?"

"Yeah? And?" Raiden bristled slightly, not really letting their issue settle so casually, "How do you know that?"

"I've got friends all over the place." Naruto said without really answering, "Leave that to me. I'll take care of him, I promise."

Well that was more than Snake had assured him when the president had been brought up earlier. But Naruto didn't leave him with just that as he got up and strapped his sword back over his back in preparation to leave.

"You're here to find out how to stop the Metal Gear being built here aren't you?"

Raiden's glare dropped when he realized that they were past the pettiness and back to business, "Yeah. It's all a part of my objective to disarm the terrorists."

"You should spend the time I'm taking to secure President Johnson looking for someone that can help you with that. It's a better use of our time." Naruto stepped out to the edge of the underbridge hidey-hole they had taken temporary refuge in, "Look for a girl named Emma Emmerich. She's a scientist being held hostage here and she had a big part in creating the AI for something huge from what I've heard. She should be somewhere in the Core too."

"Why should I listen to you?" Raiden argued in return, "Why should I even trust you?"

"Because I'm faster than you, and guys in second place don't get first dibs. Rangers lead the way." Naruto finished before jumping directly up, straight out of Raiden's sight as the white-haired operative ran to the opening and looked up to see Naruto had already made it over the top of the bridge and had vanished from his sight, eliciting a growl from him.

"Ranger?" Raiden said to himself, "The guy's more like a ninja."

"_That was so mean Aniki."_ Oh, he could still hear Catherine's voice over the Codec, and she seemed to be chiding the now absent Naruto through his line, _"Sorry about that. He's not really that nasty; it's just that this mission is really important to him. When he said there were people that he wanted to protect he meant that. I'll talk to him though, it's no excuse for being a jerk to someone that can help."_

"You shouldn't have to apologize for your brother." Raiden said, calming down significantly now, "It's alright though. If I can count on him to get to the President, I can get to the scientist and see what we can do about Metal Gear." He remembered the finned, deathbot that emerged from the water and nearly killed them, "We're definitely going to need it. He called it RAY didn't he? Metal Gear RAY?"

"_Oops. Something got lost in translation. Metal Gear RAY isn't the thing we need to know how to stop. Getting rid of that is as simple as just destroying it… even though that isn't really easy. RAY is kind of old. We're talking about an entirely new Metal Gear."_

So the Metal Gear that he'd never seen before it had tried to kill him wasn't even the real threat? And why didn't anyone tell him that? Did he really have to get that bit of information from the ultra-young info manager of a fringe organization that sounded like she still needed to be in college instead of getting the news from the head of one of the most advanced military units in the world?

People had been keeping things from him since the moment he set foot on that rusty overgrown buoy in the middle of the sea, "…Goddamn it Colonel!"

"…_Oh dear. Well okay, listen to what we've learned about it so far before you call your commanding officer and go off on him. It'll give you a chance to calm down and you'll have some ammunition to pressure him into some answers at least."_

XxX

(Onboard Arsenal Gear – Medical Bay)

"Damn them all." Solidus seethed in dull pain. His left eye was covered with an eyepatch and he kept holding his hand up, as if his vision would miraculously return to his now-missing eye, "Vamp will make them suffer."

Standing nearby, Ocelot smirked at his misfortune, arms crossed over his chest, "I told you the boy was dangerous. He doesn't fight as young as he is. He might as well be 32 instead of 22 when it comes to experience."

"You sound somewhat proud." Solidus said somewhat dangerously, as if Ocelot would be served to choose his next words wisely.

A bark of laughter came from the Russian cowboy as he took a few steps around the room, "Not at all. I'm just glad it's not just me that's having trouble with these young upstarts."

"The next generation doesn't know which way is up." Solidus said, standing up now that the pain in his eye had mostly subsided due to the painkiller applied to him earlier, "They're easy to control, and they're grossly predictable. It's why The Patriots were able to make the country the way that it is."

"But you're forgetting that it was our generation that allowed them to take control."

Solidus froze at hearing Ocelot's point before scoffing and leaving the room, "Arsenal Gear will be operational by sundown. Spread the word to the soldiers that Big Shell must be cleared entirely by 1900 hours."

"Whatever you say Solidus."

XxX

(With Snake – Shell 1 – Strut H Helipad)

There was still smoke trailing out of the tail of the commandeered Kasatka and Snake was getting a touch stir crazy just standing there and playing guard dog while Otacon did what he could to make repairs. They still needed to get innocent people the hell out of there before the Sons of Liberty ran out of use for the place.

Reaching at one of his pockets he frowned upon realizing that he had given Raiden the pack cigarettes from there earlier. Oh well. It didn't matter, he had another pack on him in a vest pocket.

"You've got to quit smoking." Otacon chided, able to smell the lit cigarette even though his full attention was on patching up the damage wrought from Metal Gear RAY's reckless missile attack. Honestly, it hit more of the Big Shell buildings than anything else, "What's the point of it all?"

"We've had this conversation hundreds of times before." Snake said, wishing to talk about something that was actually useful if they even had to speak at all, "The point is that I want to smoke. What other possible reason does there need to be? And I'm standing thirty feet away from you, so just drop it."

"Yeah, yeah…" Otacon replied, used to hearing similar things from Snake whenever his nasty little habit came up.

Cigarette hanging from his mouth, Snake turned to look at the sun as it started hanging toward the western horizon. It had been a wild couple of hours to say the very least. Catherine had reported to them that Naruto and Raiden were alright and were doing their thing over in Shell 2.

It also set Otacon's mind at ease when she told him that Raiden had agreed to rescue Emma Emmerich, and it let him focus on working on the chopper which was what they all needed for the time being, "You think Raiden's really going to save my sister?"

Taking a second to exhale his smoke into the air, Snake nodded, continuing to patrol the helipad with his rifle in hand, "Oh yeah. The kid's as green as they come when it comes to a real-life mission like this, but he'll get the job done. There's something about him."

"You think Naruto's going to save the President?"

"…"

"Yeah, that's the better question isn't it? Wasn't he the one that-?"

"Shh!" Snake suddenly told him as a sound beyond seagulls and ocean water filled his ears. He didn't hear whirring so it wasn't a Cypher robot. And then just as soon as he warned Otacon the sound stopped. Snake slowly edged in the direction of the stairs, hiding behind the crates and shelves strewn about on the rooftop helipad and waited. If there had been anyone up there they would have shot at one or both of them upon reaching the top. No one had made it up there with them yet to his deduction.

"Uh… Snake?"

Upon hearing Otacon's unnerved voice, Snake heaved a great sigh. He didn't even need to turn around to know what had happened, but damn it he had to in order to deal with it so they could move along.

Turning around with his gun trained, a figure started to step out from the backside of the helicopter, having Otacon lead the way first with an arm around his neck holding him hostage. Snake's mind was already racing as to how he was going to get Otacon away safely and tag the bastard that had captured him, but then he heard the voice.

"Wow, I got the drop on Solid Snake twice in my life." A young female voice said in a bit of amused surprise, "That's got to be the record right?"

He almost felt the need to drop his gun. Almost.

"Meryl?" A shocked Snake said as a woman walked out from behind the chopper, still holding onto Otacon with one arm around the neck. Red hair, check. Oversized damn Desert Eagle, right there at her waist. Yeah, he didn't really need to look for anything else. She was the only woman soldier that would think of toting that damn thing around, "Nice suit."

Meryl Silverburgh. He hadn't seen her since the end of Shadow Moses.

A smile came to her face at seeing that Snake remembered her, "It looks like Naruto _did _come here with some company. Good to see you guys again."

"Nice to see you too." Otacon said, still sweating slightly at being held onto from behind by someone that could kill him without trying. She wasn't choking him or holding him tightly enough to break his neck, but he still had plenty of reason to fret over his position, "…But could you let me go please?"

Meryl did just that, shooting him an apologetic look as she let him loose before turning to Snake who was still pointing his gun at her, "Seriously Snake? If I wanted to fight I would have actually brought soldiers. You're making yourself look silly. Put the gun down."

Good point. But on that note, "Why are you working with the Sons of Liberty? I can imagine that you're bitter at the military after how they handled what happened in Alaska, but this?"

"Uh-uh, wrong." Meryl said, giving him a thumbs down, "I'm not here working with the Sons of Liberty. I don't take orders from a single one of those bastards. I'm here because of Olga, that's all. I don't like this, but she wouldn't turn the mission down, and I want to make sure that if things go too far south I can get her out."

The Gurlukovich girl. Yeah, Snake knew her from having fought her two years ago, "Why?"

"Because we were blacklisted after Shadow Moses; me, Sniper Wolf, Johnny, and Naruto too." Half of them didn't know how to disappear like Snake did due to being grossly unexperienced, "Two of us hadn't been soldiers for even six months yet." Meryl snapped. She didn't mean to sound so standoffish, but she had a real reason for it, "We would have ended up like the surviving Genome Soldiers if we'd stayed, or worse. But Naruto got us to Alaska, and whether he had to sell his soul or who knows what, he got Olga to get the Gurlukovich Mercenaries to take us in, and I won't turn my back on him or her."

That was all the reason she needed to be there, doubly so once she learned that Naruto was there and saw him with her own two eyes. So there she was, and there she would remain, until the very end, whatever may come.

"Alright, I can't believe I'm saying this of all people, but enough with the cloak-and-dagger crap." Snake said as he gestured angrily with an arm, "What do you know? The kid's been gloom and doom since he found out that Gurlukovich was in on this. He's been pitted against comrades before and he fought well then. Even the Dead Cell surprise didn't throw him off as much as this is. What is going on with him?"

"I know enough about it, and it's not my place to tell or interfere." Meryl insisted, eyes narrowing on him, "He fought with Chinaman before when he didn't have to… well this is infinitely more important than that petty squabbling macho bullshit." She started walking away and brushed past him, intentionally bumping his shoulder on the way.

That girl was still the same fundamentally. Stubborn as hell. Snake smelled a showdown brewing and for once it didn't involve him. He still didn't like it one bit despite that. But everyone had their own reasons for being there, and if one person's reasons didn't interfere with another's there was nothing he could do.

Naruto was a grown man and responsible enough to know what he wanted out of today, same as him, same as Otacon, even if he didn't want to tell anyone what exactly was up with him.

"Wait." Snake said before she could leave, "Just… wait. I won't do anything. Just tell me, what's this all about? Tell me what you can. Please."

A stern look came from the girl that was twenty-three years younger than him before she finally relented and walked back over to them, "Fine. I'll make it quick. I need to get back before they activate the new Metal Gear, because by then I think we'll all be screwed."

XxX

(With Raiden – Shell 2 Core Building 1st Floor Basement – Filtration Chamber)

The entire lower level. The entire lower level of the Shell 2 Core was flooded. Entire hallways, rooms, stairwells, everything was completely underwater. Stupid Fatman and his stupid bombs. Raiden wanted to kill him all over again. And he sorely wished he'd kept the mask that came with his Skull Suit for just such an occasion, but he never thought he'd have to go for long lengths of time underwater again.

Finding an air pocket, he surfaced and took precious deep breaths, "Hate… Naruto… so much." Whether he knew it was flooded or not wasn't the point. If he did he was a bastard, if he didn't he was a lucky bastard. Grabbing one hand up to hold onto the ceiling of the flooded room, Raiden decided that then was as good a time as any to call into his superiors, "Colonel. The President is being secured, and I'm on my way to find an engineer that can help stop Arsenal Gear."

"_That's fine Raiden, but don't forget your two objectives. To stop the terrorist threat, and to rescue the President. Make sure your priorities are correct here."_

"Speaking of priorities and the terrorist threat, when were you going to let me in on the fact that this whole place was a front for building Arsenal Gear? That the real one is far beneath the ocean, down at the foundations of Big Shell?"

It took a moment, but the Colonel spoke over Raiden's Codec line, _"That was top secret information far past your level of clearance. Arsenal Gear was a high-level project of the Navy. Even I wasn't privy to it until the name started flying around."_

"I'm getting the feeling I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes here Colonel." Raiden said, his grouchy mood only enhanced because of his current circumstances, "No more secrets. If there's something else I need to know to do my job, tell me. I'm finding out more and more that you basically sent me in blind."

This wasn't some little kid, 'I'll tell you when you're older,' crap. Every single thing that they hadn't told him about his mission had and would almost assuredly continue to nearly get him killed.

"_Jack just calm down."_ There was Rosemary again. How in the world she remained so calm despite being privy to everything he was learning on the fly as well was beyond him. That was one tough girl, _"I'm scared too, but right now you've got to focus. The last thing I want is you getting hurt because your mind was elsewhere."_

"Alright." Raiden said, wondering if the Colonel kept her tapped into their conversations so she could get him to chill out once he got too heated, "I've got to keep going anyway. I'm not there yet." With that he ended the conversation and dove back underwater, navigating the hallways and squeezing through the piled up debris blocking paths until he needed more air and found another place to catch a temporary breather.

'God, I seriously hope this Emma girl isn't stuck in this.' He'd seen his fair share of dead bodies just floating along underwater as he swam. Chilling faces stuck permanently in breathless expressions. They were unable to escape when the floor flooded. Hopefully no one else would share such a fate.

Ah, another call on his Codec? Well wasn't he popular today? If it was Naruto he was going to curse that jerk out for taking the dry end of their split up mission.

"_Raiden? It's Otacon. What's your status?"_

Oh, thank heavens, someone smart to talk to for a bit.

"Miserable and wet." Raiden quipped, keeping himself afloat with one hand while keeping his other hand over his ear, "The seawater that's been pumped up from the ocean floor is flooding into the building.

"_Ahh…"_ What? No 'ahh'. He didn't want to hear an 'ahh…' like that at the moment. That was never a good thing, _"I've got something I need to tell you about E.E. She's afraid of water."_ Son of a bitch, _"When she was six she almost drowned with my father in our swimming pool."_

"She can't swim!?" Goddamn you childhood traumas! He knew them well, but could there be a more inconvenient one present at the moment?

"_Yes and no. We swam all the time when we were kids, but the accident… and I found out that she'd been calling for me the whole time while I had been in my room."_

"What were you doing?" Raiden asked, getting silence before he figured that he didn't care. It was his business. Family issues weren't going to solve his current dilemma, "Nevermind, she survived. But now you think she can't swim because of it?"

"_Yes, when her mother moved them back to England she sent me a letter saying that E.E. couldn't swim anymore. She wouldn't even wear a bathing suit."_ Well if that were the case then they were royally screwed, because Raiden doubted that there was a place in that entire floor that _wasn't _covered in water, _"Maybe you can help her get over it?"_

'Unless you want me to teach her how to suppress traumatic memories I really don't know what you expect me to do Raiden thought to himself, taking a moment to bang his head against a nearby wall, "Uh-huh." He eventually deadpanned.

"_I'm counting on you Raiden."_

So was everybody else it seemed. With nothing else to say, Raiden dove back underneath the water and continued onward. Like Rose said before, having his mind elsewhere wasn't going to help solve any problems.

XxX

(With Naruto – Shell 2 Core Building 1st Floor – Air Purification Facility)

"I'm getting the weirdest sense of déjà vu." Naruto said, staring at the electrified floor leading through a short hallway to the automatic door at the end of it, "I mean… it's just as useless now as it was back then, but what the hell?" And to prove that it was just as useless as ever, Naruto jumped up and stuck to the rooftop and walked to the end where he went through the door.

Seriously, technological advancement was no substitute for good old fashioned adaptable human guards.

Now he would have beaten the human guard's ass and made them look just as stupid as the inanimate electrified floor as well, but that wasn't the point, nor was it fair. After all, a trained monkey could have found a way past that floor into the room at the end of it. At least it would have been harder to get past even one sentry standing there in front of the door with a gun drawn.

At least something was easy today.

Strolling into the isolated room upside down, Naruto dropped to the floor, landing on his feet and circled the bend where he found the subject of his efforts sitting on the floor against the wall, seemingly waiting impatiently for something, anything, to happen to him.

A solid middle-aged man with graying hair and a sweat-soaked dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, a sloppily tied red and yellow tie around his neck, and black formal slacks. All in all he was very unspectacular and unassuming. He was also the current President of the United States, President James Johnson.

"Hey douchebag, look up." Naruto said as he stood directly over him with his arms crossed, "Now I'm going to go ahead and guess that you've never had to look someone you've screwed over in the eyes, have you?" Having said that, he crouched down to Johnson's level and stared him right in the eye, "Where are your 'partners' now?"

"The prodigal son returns." President Johnson said with an unamused humorous tone, "I bet you're loving this right now aren't you Uzumaki?"

"Oh yes…" Naruto admitted freely with a stoic look on his face, "Not as much as I'd like to, but I think it's appropriate. I mean this is what happens to puppets when they get to be useless. They get thrown into storage somewhere." He said, working his fingers in front of the man as if he were manipulating a marionette.

"I'm sure there's an allusion to your own life in there somewhere." Johnson said as he slowly stood up off of the ground once Naruto straightened himself back up, "So what pray tell would someone like you be here for?"

"Oh, to keep you from forking over the launch codes."

"You're too late for that by about two hours."

"Wha-? I thought you VIPs were supposed to be trained to resist torture. It hasn't even been ten hours since you were captured."

"And you're assuming that the information was tortured out of me."

Naruto didn't like the sound of that one bit, and his eyes showed as much, "You're in on this? You know what they plan to do and you're still in on all of this?" His mind raced and quickly put the pieces together, allowing him to step back and scrutinize Johnson with a more bored look in his eye, "Oh. I get it. Sick of being the Patriots' ultimate gofer."

"They control it all." Johnson said, pacing around back and forth in the limited space that Naruto was allowing him, "I assumed that Solidus wanted the same thing I wanted, to use the Metal Gear and its capabilities to broker a place amongst the members of the Patriots, but he wants to destroy them. To rid the country of any possible way they could control it by setting the military and the economy back to zero, forcing them out in order to act."

A stiff nod came from Naruto. He had gotten as much from Chinaman during their battle underneath the entire facility, "And he can't just do that. It'll screw up everything, not just what the Patriots are up to. It won't free this country, it'll destroy it."

"This isn't his first try at something like this." Johnson said, locking eyes with Naruto, "Four years ago back at Shadow Moses, he dispatched Ocelot to plant the seed of the idea to take them down in Liquid Snake's head, but it failed, and the Patriots ousted him from his position as U.S. President. However before they could dispose of him in secret and cover it up he used the window of a new presidential selection and went underground. You caught up to him in Lyon while he was on the way out, but you couldn't have known then what you do now."

A lightbulb went off in Naruto's head as the entire incident in France flashed through his mind in an instant, "Yeah, about that-." Without warning Naruto sank his fist deep into Johnson's stomach, punching him hard enough that he dropped to the ground and began to vomit on the floor, "I remember right after it was over with, you put me in this hell of a mess to begin with! _Thanks_ for that!" He hissed with biting sarcasm.

"It was me trying to assert to them that I could be in control from the shadows the same as them…" Johnson struggled to say, spitting out blood and bile as he tried to save some face, "Gaining control of what used to be a pet project of theirs and putting it back in our hands, I thought it would increase my standing with them. I was new to the position and the influence, and I figured if we had you, we had a surefire method of obtaining a trail to locate Solidus and Ocelot and one day eliminate them once we caught up to them… but it did the opposite. They didn't want you anywhere near our business."

And Naruto understood. Johnson strong-arming him was like a middle management type in a big corporation trying to grease the wheels of the boss by showing initiative. It backfired though since they didn't want him at all, "And then the Dead Cell crap."

"Yes." Johnson tried to get back up, but one punch from Naruto still had him sputtering weakly on his knees, "That came directly from them, not me. They took half of my idea, they used you to obtain information on something important, but not to find and eliminate Solidus and Ocelot. They kept you so far away, so that you could never bite back. You were a risk. That was when my standing with them started to fall. They only use outside elements, those that they haven't controlled themselves from day one, when they plan on disposing them after their use runs out."

"Which wound up being the Tanker Incident two years ago." Naruto deduced with a slight gnashing of his teeth.

"Not their first plan to get rid of you. In fact, finding out you were there was a shock when they received the cipher bot photo of you there with Snake, but it proved to be the most opportune way to get rid of you, especially since their later plan of liquidating Dead Cell didn't work either even with you _not_ there to fight with them."

So it was because of him that Dead Cell was slated for extermination… but not in the way that he was told by the two he had fought against so far. In all actuality they were done for the moment the Patriots decided to stick Naruto with them. It was the kiss of death, and they were going to get it even if he had never ventured to New York at Olga's behest.

Johnson continued, finally finding enough breath in his lungs to stand back up, "By the time they sprang the ambush on the unit to kill them, Ocelot had gained sway with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries and Solidus had gotten into the ear of Dead Cell. Warning them of the pending attack only solidified their loyalty to him."

And both of them had their army to go ahead and do this. To attack Big Shell.

But there was still one more thing that grated on him.

"What was I stealing all of that tech crap for?" Naruto asked, "Every single solo mission I was sent on had me killing some engineer or stealing their work. Sometimes both. What was I taking it all for?"

"You were stealing all of those things so that our scientists could finish construction Arsenal Gear's brain." Johnson said, tapping his own temple for show, "A fortress armed to the teeth with enough missiles and weaponry to pound a nearby nation into submission, stocked with mass-produced, redesigned Metal Gear RAYs." Naruto's eye twitched at their being so many RAYs, "You were stealing the starting points for scientists to create a way for Arsenal Gear to run itself through the AI within, and then some, because once its active the AI has full access to the Military's Tactical Network. It will be able to control our armed forces and our nuclear armament. It was to serve as the mobile core of the country."

Naruto just stared at him at first, trying to wrap his head around that idea. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came forth. Instead it was Catherine through his constant Codec connection to her that managed to find something to say.

"_I was scared to death about how to destroy that thing back when we found out that it was a submersible ship the size of a city that shoots nukes." _She said, voice very quiet as she contemplated everything,_ "Bad guys really don't fuck around when they make you do something do they?"_

Eventually, Naruto found the words to speak when he finally thought of the first question to ask, "Why would anyone want a goddamn sentient computer to be able to do any of that? That's completely retarded! Programmed or not!"

"_Skynet."_

"I know, right!? That's the stupidest weapon of all time!"

Johnson shook his head at Naruto's one-man conversation with himself and his sister, but he could understand the gist of their conversation without even hearing it, "You're thinking too small. Something like that can do more. It'll establish complete control over the world. The AI GW will have the ability to control all forms of digital communication, including the ability to filter info on the internet. They can shape the stream of information as they see fit."

And then Naruto thought back to his last conversation with Colonel Jackson at Guantanamo Bay, about the last assassination he had been directed to run before the Tanker Incident.

_"That man you killed had created a program that when integrated with another main computer program could look for and identify abnormality or undesirable bugs in the main program; glitches in programming, human-made mistakes, etc. It was meant to be the ultimate debugging tool, and was meant to assist in the beta testing of software devices-."_

That combined with everything else he remembered being slated to take and with the end results being Arsenal Gear's AI managed to mash together in his head. With all of the information presented to him now it only took a matter of seconds to figure it all out.

"No." Naruto said grabbing at his hair, "No, no, no." He repeated as he started circling around, "No-no-no-no-no-no-no!" Finally having enough, he punched a nearby electric control panel and busted it, sparks and jets of electricity flying everywhere, "Fuck!"

Part of Johnson wondered how Naruto didn't electrocute himself with that move, since he himself couldn't have turned the electricity off without taking some high voltage, but figured it was some freaky superpower thing that the kid had, "I see you're aware that you basically did their grocery shopping for them. Once again, with the information you had, or didn't have in this case, there was no way to know what you were doing. But when GW is fully integrated into Arsenal Gear's system it will be fully operational and the Patriots will have their trump card."

"I thought the debug thing was to defeat hackers so the NSA thing that happened in 2000 never happened again." Naruto looked down at his scuffed up suit-covered right hand and willed himself to calm down. He was starting to see red, literally, and that never ended well for him, "Why isn't Solidus a pawn like you? You would have never tried anything this big, and neither would any of your predecessors."

"It's all in the DNA boy. You knew Liquid Snake, you know Solid Snake. You know about how they're both genetically similar clones created from the genes of Big Boss?" Naruto nodded, "There was a third. One more perfect in terms of similarity to Big Boss than either of them. That third clone was Solidus."

So he was the homegrown pet president of the Patriots?

And with those genes had to come the ambition to dream big, just like Big Boss and his Outer Heaven. Neither Liquid nor Solid Snake had been the kind of people willing to settle for anything less than exactly what they wanted, and that had never been anything small. Clearly Solidus thought bigger than either of them.

"Great." Naruto grumbled, turning around before gesturing with his hand, "Stay close. I need to get you out of here. I'm going to beat eight shades of shit out of you later because more than eighty percent of the problems in my life right now are your fault, but I'm too busy trying to save the goddamn world right now to vent on you."

Johnson's eyes went wide at hearing that Naruto was actually going to try to get him out of there, but he quickly schooled his features, "That's not an option son." He said with a shake of his head, "Getting me out of here doesn't solve anything, and it doesn't benefit anyone. If I leave here, the best case scenario is that Arsenal Gear is somehow stopped. The Patriots will still have me killed. Worst case scenario is that you fail, Arsenal Gear goes active… and then I die."

Well wasn't that cheerful. Wheeling around to face him, Naruto's face showed no humor despite his dry tone, "I'm sorry, but I can't think of any other options. That is, unless you want me to kill you now and save everybody else that would do it later the trouble."

"Would you?"

Okay, he didn't see that coming.

"Would you kill me now if I asked you to? I know I'm in no position to ask anything of you, but I want the freedom to at least make one choice in my political career that was my own." He said with a sigh, "They've probably already opened the briefcase and obtained the codes, and even if they didn't they don't need a full launch to use the bomb. So please, carry out my punishment for treason as you see fit. As the man that ruined your life, you are my executioner."

Seriously… he REALLY didn't see any of this coming at all.

For four years he'd literally had dreams of getting his hands on Johnson and making him pay. Granted those dreams were quite sadistic in nature and usually quickly spiraled downward into a night terror where something horrible happened to him or his loved ones, but he'd dreamed of taking his head.

Standing before him was the reason he had to leave Johnny, Meryl, Wolf, and even Olga too back when he was finally starting to feel like he'd found a place for himself. He threatened the only family he had by blackmailing him with Catherine. All of that wound up with Naruto being spit out by the system and cast away with absolutely nothing to show for it. Just because a new U.S. President wanted to prove to his 'bosses' that he was a problem-solver and used him to illustrate it.

Four years of bleeding and fighting battles that he didn't want to start.

Two years of looking over his shoulder to see if someone was watching him, and two more years of doing the same to see if someone was going to kill him and his sister. Or even Snake and Otacon.

Four years of being away from his comrades that he'd befriended in fire. That still believed in him to that very moment.

"I want to kill you so much right now." Naruto said, fists shaking and fingers twitching at his side as he stared at Johnson with hate, "Every single part of me is yelling at me to run you through with the sword. To puree your brains with a Rasengan to your skull. To electrocute you like you're strapped to the chair."

Johnson nodded and shut his eyes, awaiting whatever chosen fate was selected for him. Hopefully it would be something simple like just a bullet to the head.

He heard steel slide out of a sheath and gulped. Naruto was going to bring him down with his sword. And he did.

Naruto proceeded to backhand President James Johnson across the face as hard as he could with the flat side of the HF Blade. It definitely drew blood. It drew a lot of blood. As a matter of fact it destroyed his face. A broken nose, busted teeth, a fractured jaw and cracked orbital bone, and a thick and nasty cut from the _dull_ side of the weapon marked his cheek right across.

"You don't get to tell me to play executioner asshole!" Naruto shouted down at him as Johnson writhed on the floor in horrible pain, blood spilling from the many places it should have been coming from, "I always wondered what I'd do if I ever got the chance, and you basically took whatever sick, perverse pleasure I _might_ have gotten out of it by basically telling me you want to die! Well that's too easy for you."

Grabbing Johnson he pulled him up by the collar and shoved him forcefully against the far wall while holding on to him tightly. Blood streamed down the man's face and he was gasping in pain, but he was still able to speak, "What are you talking about?" Johnson managed to force out.

"It's too easy." Naruto emphasized with a forceful shake, "No, you're going to live through this. If we fail, you're going to own up for this until your time comes. And if we succeed, and we will succeed, you get to live with it. Sure, you'll probably get plastic surgery to fix that scar on your face as best you can, and you'll get those teeth replaced, and the swelling on your face will go down, but before The Patriots send somebody to cap you you're always going to know that the guy you screwed to the wall on April 17th, 2005, saved the fucking world."

"Why?" Johnson asked, able to see Naruto out of the one good eye that was not swollen over.

"Because even if we win and I don't kill you, you're still a dead man no matter what I do. And when they finally send an assassin to put you down, I want the last words that go through your mind to be this: 'You are not killing me. I, James Johnson, 44th President of the United States of America, already had my life in the hands of Naruto Uzumaki on April 29th, 2009, and I have been effectively dead ever since that day.'"

Naruto went silent after finishing his tirade that had been pent up for over four years and stared at the perpetrator in the eye until he gasped sharply and his eyes bugged out wide. Looking down, Naruto saw the tip of an HF Blade sticking out of his chest through the man's back, and through the metal wall behind him.

Someone had stabbed him through the wall.

As the life drained from Johnson's eyes, Naruto quickly drew his own sword and activated the high-vibration effect to allow him use his pure strength to cut clean through the fairly thick metal wall to reach the other side. After breaking his way through he came face-to-face with the person that impaled the ex-President.

The new Cyborg Ninja that had killed Old Boy after Naruto had defeated him.

"You've got a really bad habit of showing up when I'm dealing with my personal business. At least when Gray Fox jumped me at Shadow Moses I wasn't doing anything important." Naruto said, holding up his own sword, "What. Do. You. Want?"

This time the ninja didn't say a word to him, instead lunging forward to attack him with the sword. Naruto blocked and found himself in a test of strength, staring deep into the one-sided visor of the helmet. Who was this? Why did they seem interested in him? And why did they attack him the second time after merely speaking with him the first time? A Patriot assassin perhaps? They did kill Johnson first, so there was some merit to that.

Before the battle could really begin, a slew of guards made their way around the corner at the far end of the hall and pointed their guns at them both before shouting in Russian, "The ninja from the conference room and a second intruder! Open fire!"

Both Naruto and the ninja broke off, with Naruto fending off bullets with his sword until one nicked his shoulder and the ninja retreating back through the room that Naruto had just cut his way out of.

That coward set him up to slip out through the back!

No, not tonight they weren't. Utilizing the Solar Gun attached to the opposite arm of his suit, Naruto aimed and fired a spray of light bullets that stopped the gunshots enough to follow the Cyborg Ninja's trail to take the around way out of the Core.

XxX

(Outside of Shell 2 – Strut I Rooftop)

A colorful figure clad in state-of-the-art cybernetic armor scaled the side of the Strut as if it were flat ground before coming to a stop atop it. It had been severely damaged by Fatman's bombs. The bridge was unstable and Strut I seemed as if it could come down at any time with how it creaked and groaned every so often. No patrol would even attempt to go that way, and they'd be more concerned with the person they managed to get a face to in Naruto than the mysterious figure in the combat suit.

The Cyborg Ninja had to leave, even though it didn't want to.

That was a wonderful chance to engage Naruto in battle and finish the secondary mission that it needed to gain some leverage or decent favor with The Patriots. As sickening as it was, every little bit helped with them.

But the one thing that it refused to do was kill more Gurlukovich Mercenaries than it needed to in order to complete its missions. How could it do such a thing to people that-?

It didn't matter now. Dwelling on such a thing took one's eye off the prize, and the prize here was far too important to lose sight of.

Speaking of things to lose sight of.

It dodged the modern sword blade that nearly ran it through only because the proximity sensors of the suit gave a warning, but the ninja never saw the high-speed object that slammed directly into its back almost with the force of a small car. The thick artificial exoskeletal body was knocked across the rooftop into the side of one of the water vats up there on the roof.

"Not so fun getting jumped from behind is it?"

Okay, so it was finally go time. Once and for all.

"No, you don't get to cut and run like that." Naruto said, dragging the blade of his sword across the metal rooftop as he slowly walked toward the Cyborg Ninja in the blazing sunset, "Letting a sleeping dog lie will just get you bitten on the ass later, so if you've got a problem with me let's settle up now."

"_If you insist."_ The ninja said in its machine-altered voice, picking up its nearby sword that landed right by it after Naruto's surprise attack, _"Let us settle this once and for all Uzumaki."_

'Once and for all?' Naruto set himself in his self-trained sword stance in preparation for the battle, but it was eating at him, "What did I do to you to get you to come after me? Today seems to have a theme of me dealing with ghosts from my past, so which one are you?"

Standing straight up from the ground, the ninja just seemed to stare up at Naruto before raising a hand to the helmet, flipping latches around the neck that came loose with audible snaps and hisses. The ninja had Naruto's complete and total attention. Good.

The moment the helmet came off of the ninja's head, Naruto could only imagine the look on his face. Gaping like a fish couldn't possibly have described accurately enough the expression that he held. He could feel his own muscles coil in surprise. Even the sword fell out of his hand.

It had been a long, long time since he'd seen that hair so fair that it was almost white. It had been a long, long time since he had seen the scar that he himself had inflicted upon that face several years earlier. It seemed an eternity ago.

"Olga…" Naruto said, so quietly that he wasn't entirely sure if he had spoken or not.

There wasn't any anger, or joy, or relief on her face at seeing him for the first time in two years right then and there. There wasn't an amused smirk on her face from making him think she'd been the enemy, there wasn't going to be any 'just kidding' situation here. She looked gravely serious.

Not her usual serious. Even back when they had been serious with each other in the past there had always been something a little playful between them, even when they had been in battle, even when they had been trying to one-up each other.

But her steel blue eyes were pained. The shine in them looked desperate.

"Don't you look at me like that Uzumaki." Olga warned him in a low tone of voice as she brandished her sword and her emotionless face slowly morphed into a strained scowl.

'Please tell me you're joking.' Naruto thought to himself. He tried to chuckle disarmingly, but no sound came out, and he doubted that his face even changed from the sheer astonishment that he knew was on it, 'This is your idea of a joke right?'

"Even after all of this time… even though you know that I'm the same person that tried to kill you twice today… I can still see it when you look at me, past the surprise and the hurt."

'Say something to me that'll explain all of this. Lie to me damn it! Anything!'

"You still had warmth in your eyes when you saw my face behind the visor." Olga said, closing her eyes and shaking her head almost frantically, "…Don't you look at me with those fond eyes!" She shouted into the echoing open air before she rushed at an unprepared Naruto in a blur.

"_Aniki move!"_

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><p><strong>Damn that was long. I don't know how to keep these around 10k words for some reason and I let chapters get away from me. But I haven't updated this in a while due to a lot of reasons, so why the hell not? I'll hit you with this one and see how it works for you.<strong>

**Yeah, so Metal Gear Solid 2 Raiden got a lot of flak when that game came out, and he never really got any props until Metal Gear Solid 4. I don't know why. Well, yeah I do. It's because he replaced Snake in the second half of that game and blah, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah, I'm aware of that. But I never thought he was that bad really.**

**Except for one part in the game that I definitely could have done without having to take part in or even see. **

…**You know what I'm talking about dudes that know what I'm talking about.**


	28. Give and Take

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. I'd give my right hand for the rights to either or. Not the left though. I at least need that one to write stuff and do other things like drive… and punch. You know, the important things.

**Chapter 28: Give and Take**

* * *

><p>(April 29th, 2009 – New York, New York – 20 Miles Off the Coast of Manhattan – Big Shell – Shell 2 – Strut I – Naruto: Age 22)<p>

Naruto felt a serious disconnect from anything going on around him. It was as if he wasn't even inside of his own body, as if he were watching himself and everything going on around him from the outside. He felt like he was sunken underwater in a warm tub, and his brain wouldn't let him try to pin the tail on what was happening.

But this wasn't a dream. It was real. Olga was really inside of that suit. Olga was really charging right at him faster than he'd ever figured that she could move.

"_Aniki move!"_

And that meant that the sword she was pointing right at his chest to run him through with was real too. Goddamn it.

Naruto narrowly leaned out of the way of a stab that would have turned him into a ninja-kebob and ducked a series of swings from the sword before rolling underneath one and picking his own HF Blade back off of the ground to defend himself.

He tried to get his game face on, but he couldn't bring himself to turn those eyes of his ice-cold. He couldn't fortify his heart to end her life. Not her. He couldn't even find it in him to lift the sword-holding arm up to threaten his apparent enemy.

With a gulp he tried to get something out of her, "So… I'm assuming that you're choosing to take me out to get your baby back instead of going through with whatever mystery mission The Patriots wanted you to do."

"What is happening at the Big Shell _is_ the mission that they want me to do." Olga said with a forced edge to her voice, "I'm certain that our mutual comrades let you know about at least one of those things, which begs the question that I need to ask. Why did you remain here even after knowing all of that?"

"I wanted to help you." Naruto admitted, still finding it hard to believe that it was her body behind that armor, "I wanted to find out if you were okay. To talk to you." He started to move his mouth to try and say that he just wanted to see her, but the voice of reason in the back of his head told him to shut up. Now wasn't the time to try and get her all flustered.

"You wanted to find out if I was okay?" Olga repeated with a biting lift in her tone, getting a nod out of Naruto before she pulled out the same gun she had used to end Old Boy's life earlier that day. Naruto however, was fast enough to move before she could remove the safety and kicked her hand to get the gun aimed into the air.

Three shots were fired that missed while Naruto grabbed her gun wrist and blocked her HF Blade with his own in his other hand. Olga kneed the instep of Naruto's opposite leg and disrupted his balance to get away from him with a backflip. She pointed her gun at him once more upon landing, but Naruto threw a surprise shuriken of all things that distracted her long enough so that when she fired he was too close to get the time to take good aim at.

Naruto thwacked the dull side of his sword on her hand to force her to drop the gun but was rewarded with an attempt at Olga slicing him in half in return. Several failed attempts to cut Naruto up from Olga led to her going for her gun again, but Naruto dashed and delivered a baseball slide to the gun to kick it farther away, farther than she could reasonably go to reach with him right next to her.

She forgot just how annoyingly good he could be at getting what he wanted out of battles and dictating the pace of them. And now she had no gun. But she still had a sword, and he was still on the ground from his sliding kick.

Naruto on the other hand did have a gun. He had two guns currently, having left his MP5 with Snake and Otacon. A USP at his hip, and the Solar Gun on his right wrist. Using his wrist-mounted special weapon, Naruto let off rapid-fire shots at Olga that she dodged by running away and taking cover behind the multiple vats and air filtration systems on the roof, "Pssht. You'd be better off using regular bullets from a regular gun. Those shots are slow in comparison."

"Solar Gun shots aren't as fatal as regular bullets." Naruto said, keeping his eyes on the last place he saw Olga duck for cover behind as if he were a hawk, "I can't kill you from hitting you with them alone."

"Sacrificing speed for non-lethality." She said, feigning empathy, "I'm touched."

"You will be." With that being said, Naruto pointed the gun up and fired a big bolt directly into the air. As long as the sun was out he could recharge it and waste energy like this for certain advantages he could improvise on. After the shot flew high enough, it burst in the air like flare above the strut and cast a grand shadow on the ground below. With that shadow, Naruto could clearly see Olga's silhouette behind the particular cover she was using and he quickly leapt into the air to pounce on her.

By the time the flare burst in the air above, Olga cursed and realized exactly what Naruto had done as she saw his shadow on the metal rooftop beneath her and turned in time to be struck in the face with a strong kick.

He still had a hell of a boot on him, that was for damn sure. She should have put the helmet-mask back on

She was knocked to the ground, her body rolling like a carpet until she stopped herself. She moaned in pain before she got back up and found Naruto's hand grabbing her around the face. Just as suddenly she was slammed back to the ground with Naruto's hand gripping around her mouth, "Listen to me! I want to talk to you!"

In response, Olga's helmet back over her head, forcing Naruto to let go for long enough to let her kick him off and roll back to her feet, "There's nothing to talk about!" She saw Naruto roll forward and get back up with his sword in hand and sliced at him with hers only for it to be blocked, "I'm trying to kill you, so stop asking questions and fight!"

Scoffing to himself, Naruto ran forward, his HF Blade slung low for an upward swing. The harshly vibrating blade sliced through the metal roof as if it weren't even there until he swung the weapon at Olga, grazing the chest and leaving a deep scratch on the cybernetic armor.

Twisting the weapon in his grip, Naruto circulated electricity through it and hurled it right at Olga, forcing her to move aside and avoid it as it ripped straight through the wall a ways behind her, 'He threw his weapon?'

She was then forced to block a punch aimed at her head, and then a second one with his other arm ending with them clashing in a test of strength, 'Okay, she's not as strong as Gray Fox, but still...' Naruto thought to himself, 'I train my ass off to be this strong, and she's holding me back? Bullshit.'

Olga's suit made her strength superhuman, but Naruto's training made his own strength superhuman, and his own suit revitalized the muscles that he already had.

With a yell of effort, Naruto slammed his knee into the instep of Olga's inner leg to disrupt her balance and neutralize her standing. He started rushing forward, driving her back all the way into a wall of the top of the Strut. A wall that gave out due to having been damaged already from Fatman's bombing attacks and Solidus' Metal Gear RAY rampage even before Naruto's HF Blade punctured through it like paper.

Both combatants fell away from each other on the ground. Naruto's yellow hair was covered in soot and debris, as was Olga's as her helmet opened up again, and even as she got back up to face him again she could see his blue eyes glowing intently.

With eyes like that he could never keep any kind of secret from anyone that knew him. Those eyes were his weakness. They were truly the windows to his soul, because those that knew him well enough could tell what he was feeling just by looking at the shine of his eyes.

His face was seemingly locked in combat mode, frozen in a stony mask of focus, but those eyes… they were still looking at her with such partiality that he couldn't hide or fake. It made her feel so… naked.

At the moment, any action he could have taken would have felt better to her. He could have created clones to outnumber her, he could have hit her with all of his might, electrocuted her, shot her, used his violent Rasen-thingy, anything. But he didn't. He wasn't fighting to win and he wasn't trying to lose either.

It was evident that he was doing what he was doing in an effort to get her to calm down. And she felt an anger rise in her, "I told you not to look at me like that!"

She forewent using her sword, blatantly surprising Naruto when she dropped the weapon and punched at him. So surprised was he at the completely unfounded action that it actually hit him, right in the face, and sent him spinning into a nearby wall inside of the dark, powerless room of apparent storage that they had broken themselves into.

Shaking his head out, Naruto spit blood onto the floor and looked back up at her with a dead expression instead of the battle-focused one from before. With a sniff, probably to clear out his nose from the punch he'd taken, Naruto stood straight up against the wall and simply outstretched his arms to the side, "You know why I do."

"I hate you…" Olga said to herself, but in the room Naruto could hear what she said as clear as day.

Cracking his neck to the side, Naruto left his arms wide, "Uh huh? Really?"

"I hate you."

"Come on."

"I hate you." Olga chanted to herself, slowly walking forward. Every time she said it her legs started moving faster until eventually her words sped up and she had broken into a run in his direction, "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

The moment she got close enough, Naruto wrapped his arms around her as if she weren't a terribly destructive and lethal enemy after his life. She struggled mightily against what could only be seen by anyone watching it as a hug. A comforting embrace even.

Twisting her arms free after a few moments, Olga punished his body with hard punches to both sides, eventually getting the sweet spot and nailing his kidneys on both sides. It was lucky that it was a suit instead of absolute cybernetic enhancements, because if it had been Gray Fox that had punched him there'd be two holes where the fists had gone.

Naruto coughed blood but didn't let go, taking punch after punch until they started to slack off, and the arms of the scar-faced Russian beauty dropped to her sides, "…You son of a bitch… I hate you. You killed my father."

"You know I didn't." Naruto said softly into her hair while he kept hugging onto her.

"I know you didn't!" Olga exclaimed in turn, eyes comparable to a dam about to burst as she cried against him, "You promised me you wouldn't kill any of my men, and you kept that promise! Even now you're keeping it."

He killed none of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries populating Big Shell himself. He decimated the Fallschirmjäger with extreme prejudice, and killed Chinaman as well, but he seemed to make a concerted effort to avoid killing her soldiers.

Someone that wouldn't kill her grunts even when it would make it easier to continue infiltrating Big Shell wouldn't kill her father in cold blood when she asked him not to directly. His strength of will and character was the only thing that hadn't shaken about his personality since the night he'd smuggled Johnny, Meryl, and Wolf to her and her unit in Russia.

The world could deliver as many body blows to him as they would like, just as she did, until he was sputtering blood and pale in the face… but she would not break his will.

She wanted to convince herself that the lie Ocelot told her men about Naruto killing her father Sergei was true, because he'd never called her. He'd never shown his face to her again after the cursed Tanker Incident. She tried to convince herself that it was the mark of a coward. Of someone that had something to hide because he couldn't look her in the eye, but here and now she knew and had always known that such had never been the case.

That had been what she'd been clinging to in order to make the bitter pill of killing him easier to swallow. But the thin wall of the lie that she never believed wasn't enough to do so.

Her body physically shook. She had already lost her indomitable will, and the target that she needed to kill was physically consoling her for the love of God. What kind of sick and twisted irony was this?

She shoved Naruto against the wall and he still didn't react to it. She lifted her fist to turn his head into paste against the metal wall, no reaction. And she finally started punching.

"I! Hate! You!" Olga shouted as loud as she could as she punched again and again, "Why!? Why!? I need to kill you! You know I do!"

Every punch she threw didn't hit Naruto at all, but instead pulverized the metal wall right by his head until her fist had forced hole straight through it. Again, Naruto didn't flinch, "I know. For your baby." Her baby that she'd never even seen or held, "I've known for a while now."

"Why don't you run?" Olga asked him almost desperately, "Why don't you fight back to kill? This is how it was always supposed to go wasn't it? We met in battle as enemies, so it has to end that way too right? Right!? Why won't you defend yourself?"

Naruto just stared long and hard at her before he managed to mentally muster the words he wanted to say to her, "I came here for you. Not for anything else. I don't care… about this country. I never really did. How can I care about fighting for some faceless machine that doesn't even know who I am or what makes me the person I am? I care about the people that care about me. I do what I do for them, and that's that."

In Konoha it was easy to be patriotic. So laughably easy to love the village and everything about it. Compared to the things he'd found as national traits in this world, the hidden villages might as well have been family. He couldn't attach himself to the cause of fighting for anything other than the people around him, because it never seemed any bigger than that.

And that never changed, it was just that the circumstances and the degree of the fighting got progressively more desperate and all-encompassing.

"I don't care if Solidus wins, or if the Patriots keep doing their damn thing. What does any of that have to do with me?" Naruto tried to explain as he stood closer to Olga than he'd been in over two years, "If one side or the other won, and left me alone forever afterwards, what would it matter to me? What matters to me is what all of this is doing to all the people I care for… especially you."

Some people would call such a thing selfless. Hell, the people around him that he was actually doing it for would call it selfless. No it wasn't. Naruto was aware of that much. Being selfless would have meant that he'd have killed her. He'd have gone right through whoever was in his way to save the state of the nation, no matter what it cost him. For the greater good as it were.

No, his motivations for coming to Big Shell were entirely selfish. If anyone cared to ask him what he thought about his own actions he wouldn't hide it, nor would he apologize for it.

"Why me?" The mercenary princess asked, "I've told you from the day we've met that I'll kill you one day in battle. Are you a fool?"

Raising an eyebrow, Naruto actually touched at his ear and switched off his Codec and the built-in camera in his suit to give them actual privacy, "You already know the answer to that. You're not so stupid that you don't know why. Don't be tsundere about it." He grumbled.

"That word again." She responded a bit testily at her own ignorance of the term, "I don't know what that implies."

"It doesn't matter now." Naruto said with a shake of his head and an awfully sad smile on his face, "I've been thinking about it every day since I found out from the others that you have to kill me for that baby… and I've been weighing my life against the life of a child I don't know, I've never met, and am never going to see. I made my decision a while ago, but I've just had a lot of time to really think it over."

Olga backed up several steps with a very stern look on her dirt-smudged face, "Uzumaki… what are you saying to me?" She seemed to be waiting for a particular answer, and woe be to him if it was the one she was fully expecting him to give her.

"I'm saying I make more problems than I seem to fix. I've somehow hurt every single person that's ever bothered to learn my name since the day I turned up in Alaska. Every ounce of good I've ever done seems to be grayer than anything else. And I made a choice."

A choice he never spoke to anyone about. He'd had enough times having seen it in his nightmares to come to terms with it already, and no one else that he spent any real semblance of time with would have understood or condoned his actions anyway.

"If you really have to, I don't have a problem dying if it'll-."

He didn't even get to finish as Olga forearmed him stiffly in the face, drawing blood from the bridge of his nose, "Shut up! I don't want to hear that out of you! Not from you!" Naruto staggered slightly and dabbed at his wound before glaring at her, "You're going to give yourself for me? Lay yourself down at the altar as a sacrifice?"

She wanted to hit him again. She wanted to hit him again so badly. The ease with which he said such a thing just irked at her. Granted it was his choice to make, but it was the wrong choice and she was the wrong person to make it in front of.

"I haven't made a choice that I've felt is mine alone in four years." Naruto said, voice in a growl, "And don't you want to kill me anyway? So just do it."

"I won't! Not like this!" She exclaimed, "My primary mission for them here is not to kill you! It was a failsafe to ensure that they got _something_ out of me if I declined the true mission! If I can succeed with my actual purpose they'll keep her alive!"

"What primary mission?" Naruto asked, not knowing what was up anymore, "You're with Solidus and Dead Cell. That's the exact opposite of what the jerks that are blackmailing you would-." He stopped talking and went wide-eyed. Well wasn't she just a lovely little double-agent, "Son of a bitch."

Seeing that he got the most important part of the necessary point, Olga continued, "I need to ensure the survival of operative Raiden and that his mission to stop Solidus succeeds."

Naruto punched into his own palm, a fire back in his eyes that had been vacant mere minutes ago, "Fuck that, give me a blunt object and show me where Solidus is. I'll beat him to death. That'll stop it."

"That's not what they want." Olga said, "They want him to do it, and they want me to assist as support from the shadows. To help him along and get him past things he otherwise wouldn't be able to breach without help. To do that they needed someone inside. I don't want to believe that all of this has been lain out since 2007 but…"

"Why?" What did it matter who killed Solidus as long as the job got done somehow?

"I don't know."

"What can I do?"

"Stay out of the way." Olga said with a grit to her teeth, "I don't know how you found out about this. You must have an entire team of hackers at your beck and call if you managed to learn as much as you did to get here-."

"We just have two actually." Naruto interjected as he tried to wiggle the bridge of his nose in case it was broken. Luckily it wasn't, "…Just saying. It was a lot of legwork first to get some keywords, and I got my ass beaten in Africa by an ethnic militia to get them." He let go of his nose and looked at the blood on his suit-covered fingertips, "Bitch. I didn't say anything about elbowing me in the face."

The interruption was so not necessary. Good lord, did it make her a sick person that she earnestly missed just how insufferably infuriating he was? It had to, "-_But_…" Olga continued, "…Even so, this fight cannot be completed by anyone else."

"How the hell would they know that he didn't do it himself?" Naruto asked before going still in understanding and looking her way. She hadn't said the name of the organization doing harm to her since they'd been talking, "…Olga, say 'Patriots.'"

"La-li-lu-le-lo." Olga started to say before glowering and cursing nastily in Russian, much to Naruto's chagrin as he palmed the metal plate on his headband, "Nanomachines. Wait. Why can you say it? You were in FOXHOUND at some point weren't you? And Dead Cell?"

She required the injection of nanomachines in order to utilize the Cyborg Ninja suit that had been meant only for her. They allowed her to heal from injuries far quicker, they stimulated her muscles that had already been fortified by intense training and enhanced that much more by the suit. They allowed her to use a Codec without speaking aloud, let her hack into terminals remotely, and other things.

It was something she didn't want initially, but learned to see the positives of since it enhanced her capabilities and it was apparently required to accomplish her mission under the guise of the Cyborg Ninja.

Naruto couldn't have honestly been implying that he'd been able to keep them from getting some kind of internal hold on him for almost five years while he worked for them though. At some point they would have made him get shots. Inoculations for deployments to wherever in the world, or any other number of things that they'd come up with to find an excuse to give him an injection.

But that was exactly what he'd been implying, "I made clones do all of my checkups in FOXHOUND and Dead Cell. Never took a single injection myself." The rampant paranoia he'd been a victim of following the horrid experiments from Dr. Clark inadvertently made one of his stupid habits somewhat productive.

"_Ublyudok _(Motherfucker)!"

"Oi, language! You're someone's goddamn parent you know!"

So basically that meant that she was always under Patriot watch at all times, and so was the Raiden guy. Of course he cared about the latter _far_ less than he cared about the former for one marked and obvious reason. To hell with that 'noble death' crap. He was pissed off again now and the only remedy was some damn problem-solving.

"So now what?" Olga asked, admittedly feeling kind of hollow after everything that had transpired. The last half-hour had been perhaps the most extreme emotional roller coaster she'd ever been on in her entire life. There wasn't going to be much hiding that behind a veil of irritated indifference this time. She was noticeably rattled.

"You tell me." Naruto replied, "What were you about to go and do if you didn't decide to play deathmatch with me."

Olga walked up to him and the thought drifted through her mind to put a hand up, to trace his face with her fingers, to dab at the already healing cuts that she'd caused, to touch at the distinct marks on his cheeks. But she didn't do any of those things. Her face didn't even betray the seriousness she was trying to, needed to convey.

A hard upbringing gave her a killer poker face.

"It is almost time to activate Arsenal Gear. Boarding of the men is in progress as we speak." Olga said, "Operative Raiden will need to be onboard the vessel by that time or it is all over."

It didn't need to be said just what would be over. The life of Olga's child, and the infrastructure of the eastern half of the United States to say the least, "And how are you supposed to get him on?" Naruto asked curiously.

"The only way on is in the second basement floor of Core 1, but it's so heavily guarded and access is extremely restricted. Ocelot, Solidus, and I are the only ones that can get in aside from the handful of officers that are allowed only so that they can direct the soldiers down into the ship."

There would be time to worry about that later. First and foremost they needed to put themselves in a situation to succeed before they could think about how to hoodwink the bad guys.

"Okay… uh, just be quiet for a bit." Naruto said as he turned away from Olga and turned the camera built into his suit and his Codec back on. He was going to get his butt chewed out for having them off and he knew it, because he already had a call blaring in his ear to answer to.

"_What the hell Aniki? Why'd you turn your gear off in the middle of a fight?"_

"This isn't pay per view Kitty, this was personal. I can turn this shit off anytime I want. You're lucky I let you watch the Chinaman fight." Naruto replied to his younger sister before getting to business, "Anyway, where the hell is Raiden?"

"_Hmph…"_ Catherine was not pleased. But if she found out that the Cyborg Ninja/Olga was still right there he'd never hear the end of the earful he'd get from it, hence why he turned around,_ "Raiden's in Shell 2, Strut L, and he's got Otacon's not-sister with him too. What do you want?"_

"Patch him through for me." Naruto requested.

It took a few seconds, but eventually Naruto heard a closely youthful voice on the other line, _"Yeah? Raiden here. What's the matter?"_

"You've got Emma." Naruto said, actually sounding pleased with Raiden's painstaking efforts to retrieve the young genius programmer, "You're gonna be Otacon's best friend when you get her to where she needs to be."

"_Yeah, she already told me. The server room in Core 1 second basement."_ Oh, well that was convenient. Naruto hadn't been inside of Core 1 since he'd been there so he wasn't privy to its interior makeup,_ "Do you have the President?"_

It was a bad question to ask, "Many, many things have happened."

"_That means he's dead doesn't it?"_

"Let me just say first that there was no way that it could have been avoided." Olga let out an amused scoff and Naruto turned to glare at her, but fortunately it wasn't picked up over the line, "It's kind of late for getting him out anyway." Naruto said as he walked back out into the sunset on top of the ruined Strut that he and Olga had been fighting on and in, "He gave up the codes to Solidus willingly anyway, so even if he didn't die here he'd be getting it for treason later."

"_That's… true enough I guess. So how are we supposed to get back to the Shell 1 Core? The bridge linking the Shells is out if you remember and I'm pretty sure that Emma can't jump like we can if I had to hold her hand just to swim her through the bottom levels."_ *Thwack* _"Ow. You know it's true."_

That was a problem.

The line went silent again for a second as Raiden seemed to be listening to something that Emma was saying until she too got involved in the Codec conversation, _"Hello? You were with the President weren't you whoever you are? Did he have anything on him?"_

"Some disk he gave me when he was talking about the AI Arsenal Gear is supposed to have in it."

"_Yes! Alright! Once we get back to the server room we can make this work!"_

"What is it supposed to be?" At this point, Olga was listening in as well with her own Codec connection, piggybacking off of Naruto's even though she let him talk and didn't try to interject herself, "He really just threw it at me while he was telling me what I did. He didn't explain it."

"_I'll explain it once we get there. Err... how are we supposed to get there?"_

Again, the bridge was out. Naruto was about to suggest that they use the conveyor system of the Big Shell facility, but one more time for emphasis; the bridge was out. Which meant that the pipes connecting to every place in Shell 2, where they all were, was out.

Well there was one other quick way that Naruto could think of, but it wasn't exactly stealthy. Those stupid little cipher robots would discover what was going on in a heartbeat. But then again they had the most badass sniper on the face of the planet hanging out somewhere on Big Shell to cover them.

"Get to a roof. I've got an idea and I'll get you some cover to pull it off, alright?"

"_How can I trust you? Raiden here might, but I don't even know your name."_

"Talk to my sister. You're her age. She'll guide you through what you need to do. I need to get you guys set up to go. Kitty, you're on."

"_Gotcha Aniki. Don't worry, I've got this."_

Atta girl.

With that, Naruto ended the Codec connection and prepared to start another one with Sniper Wolf before Olga set a hand on his shoulder and stopped him, "I've already told Wolf to find a good position to watch over the bridge area." No need to get him to waste time when they needed to get over there as well, "Not that _we_ need it to return, but what exactly was your plan for Raiden and the girl?"

"Oh, I thought you told me to stay out of the fucking way?" Naruto said as he walked back outside into the light, "Since when do you get included in the planning process?"

Olga was more than up to the task of verbally jousting with Naruto, apparently not missing a beat even after two years of never speaking, "Since you're using _my _sniper to cover your little flying toy."

"Wolf was my sniper first." Naruto reasoned glibly, "I just loaned her services to you out of the goodness of my heart." For four years.

Technically, Olga had her for longer than Naruto ever did, "And now I'm loaning her services to you out of the goodness of _my_ heart." She said, flicking at Naruto as she walked past him, "I should be killing you as a contingency plan but I-."

"-Love me?"

"-Could use your help you ass."

"Oh…" Naruto said, trying to hide the fact that he was a bit disappointed as Olga walked past him to get her gun back from where she'd dropped it.

XxX

(With Raiden – Shell 2 – Strut L)

The only other option that Raiden had come up with to move from Shell 2 to Shell 1 was to run around the oil fence in the water underneath the buildings. Not the best idea for being sneaky, especially with a woefully untrained girl along with him.

Following behind Raiden as they both made it up from the stairwell that led to the roof was a petite young woman with brown hair in a high ponytail with two chopsticks. She wore a pink and black t-shirt and black shorts with pink shoes and had on glasses, "I don't know if you know this or not…" She started to say, "…But I'm not a big fan of heights, whatever it is we're about to do."

"Swimming, bugs, and heights." Raiden said, shaking his head as he started checking around for guards posted on the roofs. There were none. The amount of Gurlukovich Mercenaries patrolling Big Shell had been steadily dwindling as the day died down. Usually the opposite was supposed to happen. As the sun started going down, patrols were supposed to intensify, "Emma, if you're afraid of anything else you might as well get it out now because we're probably going to run into it."

From his point of view with his binoculars he could only see slight smattering of troops, but the slack was being picked up by those stupid flying robot drones that had only been in small numbers before.

The girl with him wasn't paying attention to the possible dangers of their situation though, even the one that she was supposed to be afraid of at the moment, instead paying attention to the burning sunset that bathed the entire facility and ocean in orange.

For such an eyesore of a facility, right then even it looked beautiful. Half-destroyed as it was from the day's events, there was still a modicum of serenity there somehow.

"_Are you two on the roof of the Strut yet?"_ The youthful voice of the Catherine girl roused both of them from their separate thoughts, _"Your ride is almost there. I had to keep it on the Manhattan shore. Aniki said it'd be more bad than good to have with him, but I kept it as close as I could anyway, just in case."_ She didn't sound the type to be involved in any kind operation like this in the least. She seemed far too informal to run support for anything of this nature.

"Kept what?" Raiden asked before he soon got his answer. The surprising sight of a hovering board of all things lowered itself into their sight, right in front of them, "You're kidding? What the hell is this?"

"_This is the platform board. It's an old bit of FOXHOUND R&D that Aniki managed to keep with him after the whole Shadow Moses mess. It's totally stable enough to get you both to where you want to go, so hop on."_

"This thing seems super-dangerous." Emma said, pointing at the odd board. It was definitely big enough to fit them both, but that didn't make her trust it at all. They were almost 200 feet in the air and that thing would be the only object keeping them from crashing and dying. A board, "How are we supposed to fly it?"

"_I'm flying it remotely. There's no way either of you would know how to do it."_ Raiden until that point had been rather quiet, and attention turned over to him as from the camera on the board Catherine could see him and his rather grumpy expression after her last comment, _"Oh you'd better not say you can. Don't tell me you can fly this thing."_

"I can't fly it." Raiden said rather tetchily, "I underwent VR Training for it, but it was a failed program. It's impossible to operate. It goes too fast for your feet to safely remain attached to, and using your feet is the only way you can steer it so you can't use it."

It was a shame too. It had been the coolest potential aspect of his training that he couldn't employ in the field or in VR, and it irked him that it was now staring him in the face in real life. And anyway, how could Naruto even use it without someone else piloting? He couldn't stand on it and stay on-.

Oh, and then he remembered that Naruto could stick to stuff.

Bastard.

"_Just take a seat or lay down on it or something and I'll steer you where you need to go. It's a pretty smooth ride if I keep it level."_

Raiden chose to sit down at the head of the board while holding an M4 in his grasp, just in case. Emma on the other hand was a bit more hesitant about the whole thing, "Wait, are you sure there's no other way?"

"_Well look for yourself. The connecting bridge between the Shells is out."_ Catherine explained, _"So unless you want to go down to the oil fence and play gymnast balancing on the pontoons I'd say that this is your best bet."_ She knew that it was probably difficult after all of the crazy things that had been happening to listen to some random girl's voice and have to follow direction from her, but there wasn't much she could do about that, _"I promise I know what I'm doing. Please just trust me."_

For some reason, hearing the voice of a girl that was so close in age to her actually motivated Emma to trust her as opposed to how it did the opposite for the most part for Raiden. She still wasn't a fan of hanging out on a damn board hundreds of feet over the water, but it had to be done.

With a slight whimper, Emma got onto the board laying down, wrapping her arms around it as tightly as she could before letting out a deep breath, "Okay, I think I'm ready to go."

"_Good."_ Catherine said as the board turned around in the direction that they needed to go in, _"I'll take it nice and slow. No need to scare the hell out of you any more than this already is probably."_ With that, the platform board slowly started to accelerate. It was impressive how silent it ran. There was only a low hum from it that you'd never hear if you weren't right next to it, _"Don't want to risk you guys losing your balance either."_

Even with her saying that they weren't going to go very fast, they were still going pretty damn fast. 20 mph was pretty fast with no windshield or anything in the way. It was easier on Raiden than it was on Emma because he was strong, but even so he was pretty taken with the experience.

He was steadily trying to call Snake though, but he wasn't getting any response for some reason.

With a growl to himself as he kept a steady eye out for anything that might be danger-close to seeing them he readjusted his Codec frequency to check in with his own support team, "Colonel, I've got Emma Emmerich and we're on the way back to the Shell 1 Computer Room."

"_Good. And what about the President?"_

Yeah, that was the thing, "…He didn't make it." He could hear his superior officer inhale for a comment, but he wasn't having it, "Don't sit there and pretend that this is some kind of catastrophe. No one I've run into today out of any of the Sons of Liberty considered the President important, and he gave them the codes they needed for the launch sequence anyway."

"_What are you saying Raiden?"_

"I'm saying the President of the United States basically betrayed this country." He said in a rather surly manner, "It doesn't matter at this point. Arsenal is almost ready for launch, and we need to get to the server room to try and stop it by taking out the AI running it called G.W."

There was a silence over the line. It had to be expected given that he'd just told them the President was dead… also he had done so in the most detached, uncaring way possible, but after what he was finding out today it was getting kind of hard to care about a puppet leader.

Eventually though, he did get an answer on the other line, from his girlfriend of all people who had clearly been listening in, _"The Colonel left his post to inform others about what you just said."_ Rosemary said, explaining the silence and the absence, _"Jack. What you said about the President, is it true?"_

The guy that told him (Naruto) had absolutely no reason to lie about it, and he seemed somewhat sheepish at actually revealing that information to him, so it stood to reason that everything else was true. Naruto was with Snake and they'd been covering his ass all day. That bought them the benefit of the doubt for the most part, "Yeah. It's pretty heavy isn't it?"

"_Why is this happening? Why to you? Why are _you _on this mission of all people? And why today?"_

He didn't know the answer to that. Why was he the only one sent in? There had to be someone better qualified to get the job done. What were they expecting out of him? To pull through and save the day like some kind of legendary hero? Like Big Boss? Like Solid Snake? Even Snake had help. More help than anyone would ever know if what Naruto had done today was any inkling as to what he'd done in the past.

"I don't know." Raiden admitted, putting his gun to the side for a moment, "I wish I could tell you, but I just can't."

"…_Jack. Do you remember what day tomorrow is?"_

"Still no. Sorry Rose. Right now I just hope I'll stay alive until then so you can tell me and make me feel like an idiot." He tried to joke, but it went over flat in the face of the fact that even jokingly, that wasn't guaranteed at all.

"_Be careful."_

"I'll try." And with that, the conversation ended. He was quite certain that Catherine had remained on and had listened in. He didn't mind. He was also pretty sure that Emma had been listening to him even if she hadn't been connected via Codec, "I'm done with the conversation now."

"_Sorry, I didn't know you were calling anyone until I heard the static. If I'd cut out your side would have known that I was locked into your frequency."_ And they would have immediately tried to trace her, _"Didn't mean to eavesdrop on you and your girlfriend."_

"It must be nice." Emma said, looking down beneath their board, "I used to think that I had someone that cared about me like that. But Hal just ran out on me after my stepfather died during… an incident. He never called or anything when my mother moved us back to England."

"_Otacon really did care, but he just didn't know how to face you or your mother after… well I'm sure you know."_

"_You_ know?" Emma didn't seem to be at all reassured by Catherine apparently knowing about their screwed up family history.

"_Just a little! After two years there's only so much to talk about without glossing over personal stuff at some point you know? He knows stuff about me that he probably shouldn't know if it makes you feel any better!"_

"It really doesn't!"

Raiden let out a sigh and held his temple, "Stop arguing…" He said, trying desperately to get the two young ladies to shush up for the time being. Could that board move a bit faster without having one of them fall off. Honestly, he'd rather fight Vamp again than deal with two girls bickering.

But Vamp was dead. He threw him into purified water that no one could swim to the surface within before he found Emma, so that was settled.

XxX

(Shell 1 Core – 2nd Basement – Server Room)

"What do you mean you ran into Meryl?" Naruto asked Hal 'Otacon' Emmerich upon finding his fellow Philanthropy member sitting at the main chair of the supercomputer that was supposedly the heart of the Big Shell, "And where the fuck is Snake? He's not answering his radio."

"With Meryl." Otacon said, adjusting his glasses on his face as he seemed to be speeding through whatever he could hack into to try and help them in the meantime until Emma got there. It was a nervous little thing he had to do to hide how uneasy he was with seeing her in person again after so long, "Aren't you listening, or did the Cyborg Ninja beat you punch-drunk?"

"You know I can make you cry in front of your stepsister and Sniper Wolf right?" The caged parrot nearby squawked loudly, irking Naruto's sense of hearing to the max that he would allow it to be stressed, "I will eat you!" He hadn't any food all day since setting out that morning, so there was a chance he would have actually done so.

"Please don't." Otacon said to try and assuage Naruto's own pent-up nerves, "I think that belongs to E.E. anyway. The last thing I want to do after seeing her for the first time in years is explain why one of my teammates is eating her pet. Where's the 'Cyborg Ninja' anyway?"

He already knew who the mysterious ninja was due to Naruto telling him as much. It was important in order for the next phase of their plan to work for his team to know that the ninja was on their side more or less.

"Getting ready to get Raiden aboard Arsenal Gear." Naruto said with a snap to his jaw as he spoke, "She says he's got to be the one to finish Solidus or her baby-..." And at that he drew his thumb across his neck to get his point across. Otacon grimaced in understanding, "I don't get it though. What's the point?"

He or Snake could more than likely fight Solidus and just be done with it, even if it would be a difficult battle. Olga probably had a good shot at killing him herself with her powered suit and her own skills. Why did it have to be so roundabout to get the results they were looking for?

"I don't either." Otacon admitted before turning to look at Naruto, "But how are you getting in?"

Naruto smirked and held up a keycard that he'd received way earlier in the day from a trusted friend on the other side of the fence, "I've got clearance. Trust me. I already checked, and this opens the elevator down. I'm fine." Johnny hadn't been blowing smoke. When he said his key card opened everything, he meant everything, "You've got to get the hostages out of here pretty soon. The base is pretty much empty."

This he already knew. When it was time, he had to fly the helicopter to evacuate the hostages that had been taken at the outset of the day by the Sons of Liberty. This thing was winding down to the wire here, and once Arsenal Gear took off the Big Shell façade would probably be destroyed with whoever was inside of it at the time.

As the two lapsed into a momentary silence, Naruto looked around through the glass around the server room seeing not a stitch of movement anywhere around them. It was like a ghost town in there now, which led Naruto back to his original point, "…Where the fuck is Snake?" He asked again quietly, getting another screechy squawk out of the nearby parrot, "Shut! Up!"

XxX

(Meanwhile – Inside of Arsenal Gear)

Standing inside of the long elevator going down far beneath Big Shell, both Meryl and the balaclava-clad Johnny stood inside of the windowless transport with a closed-up cardboard box between the two of them with a slot opened up for someone to see out of, "This is such a bad idea." Johnny bemoaned under his breath, but with only the mechanical sound of the elevator being able to mask it everyone inside heard it, "We're going to get shot the second these doors open up."

"Unless it's Solidus or Ocelot themselves, no one else is going to care." Meryl defended in turn before turning to their third, disguised in the getup for the now eradicated Fallschirmjäger of deceased Dead Cell member Old Boy, "How are you feeling Snake?"

"Safe and sound." Snake said behind the mask that the uniform provided him, "You guys can carry me until we get somewhere where I can pop out right?"

"I can." Meryl said, making a gesture of showing off her bicep in her suit, "I'm not the same untrained rookie you met at Shadow Moses Snake. I can carry at least two of you if I had to." She boasted blatantly, "I can't believe you're still using the box trick."

"The success of a mission hinges on how well you use your cardboard box." Snake said with great conviction, "I'll stop using it when it stops working."

"When it stops working you'll get shot."

"Good incentive to stop using it then isn't it?"

Not a half bad gambit for getting into Arsenal Gear in his opinion.

"How far down is this thing?" Snake asked, as the ride had taken well longer than he'd figured it should have at this point and he was getting a bit antsy. The fact that he was balled up in a box was probably not helping any of this at all either.

"What do you think Big Shell's foundations are built down around and on top of?" Meryl asked as a method of somewhat answering his question, "It's a _long_ way down. As in on the sea floor."

"Jesus." Snake grumbled, "Whatever happened to the old days when the next big machine of mass destruction or domination was stored in a heavily guarded, high-security hangar? What was wrong with those days?"

"People kept blowing them up." Johnny pointed out before touching on something else, "You know, I thought you were a scary guy after Shadow Moses. You're really not that scary when there's no chance of you pointing a gun at me and blowing my brains out."

"I could do that if you want." Snake offered dryly.

"N-No thanks, I'm fine."

The elevator clanged to a shaky stop and Meryl took a deep breath before turning to Snake, "Keep your mouth shut no matter what.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Snake deadpanned as if she thought that he didn't know the drill, "Just don't drop me. Ow." He complained weakly when Meryl kicked the box prior to picking it up, "I'm getting you back for that."

"Uh huh." Meryl replied, not believing him or caring at all as she picked the box up with a grunt once the doors opened and they were met by sleekly armored Arsenal Tengu commandos pointing P90s at them upon stepping off, "Down boys."

Quick to stand down upon seeing Meryl, the specially suited soldiers saluted her momentarily before one spoke up, "Ma'am, there's a Tengu suit awaiting you in your quarters if you'll head there now."

The fiery redhead nodded and moved along while Johnny languished behind a bit to speak to the one that had just informed Meryl, "Uh, where's mine? Do I get a suit?"

"We're out." The Tengu guard stated flatly.

"What? No way." Johnny rebutted indignantly, "Why the hell don't I get a suit, but everybody else down here does? That's not fair."

"Because these suits are dangerous, the equipment we use is dangerous." The Tengu said, holding up his P90 and showing off his sidearm HF Blade that he also had on his person, "I'm scared of standing in front of you when you're just holding AN-94. You're not getting a P90 and a sword. Live with it."

Oh sure. Have your safety turned on in a deadly firefight one time and nobody ever lets you forget it. And when his gun accidentally went off because he'd sneezed that one time when they'd been stationed in the Kuril Islands, at least that time the only person he shot was himself.

"Damn it I've survived every last second of this hellstorm called a mission just like the rest of you, and right when it's about to be over I can't even get a suit that'll let me block bullets with a sword that can cut through anything!" Johnny exclaimed, beginning to throw a bit of a fit, "You guys get brand-spanking-new P90s and I'm stuck with the same shitty old rifle I've been using for the last two years!"

"Basically." The Tengu said, his facial expression hidden by his helmet, "What are you going to do about it?"

At that Johnny gave a pause, "…I'm telling Miss Olga!"

"She was the one that told us specifically not to let you use the ultra-dangerous suits and weapons."

"Damn it!" Johnny shouted as he stomped away after Meryl.

If nothing else, his little hissy fit allowed her to get the random box she was carrying past the guards without anyone so much as glancing at it.

He still wanted his damn Tengu suit though. Those things were badass, "…I wanted to move like Boss."

XxX

By this time Raiden had made it to the server room in Shell 1 with Emma in tow. Naruto's platform board had flown off safely at Catherine's behest, its job being done, and the stepsister/stepbrother combination of Emma and Hal Emmerich were busy inputting an apparent super-virus directly into G.W.'s system.

Emma's fingers were clacking away rapidly on the keyboard before pushing her chair over to work again on another one. Otacon really didn't even need to be there apparently as he was mostly just observing. He felt extremely out of place. Even forcefully clearing his throat didn't get her attention.

Upon entering the room, Emma merely spared him a passing glance and a curt 'Hal' before Naruto pulled out the disk he'd received and she got to work, "This is really hard to watch." Raiden eventually wound up saying as he and Naruto had been standing off to the side and out of the way for the last twenty minutes.

"I know. It's boring as hell isn't it?"

"No." Raiden insisted, wishing that he could palm his forehead without looking like some kind of fool, "I mean your friend really looks like he wants to talk to her but, well just look at him."

"Yeah, he's not really good with women." Naruto said with a bit of an empathetic cringe at his comrade's misfortune, "I mean I can see why after what I heard about his stepmother and all of that. I used to pick on him since he had a monster crush on Sniper Wolf, but sheesh. It's painful to sit back and actually pay attention to in hindsight after what I know now."

Hell, the saving grace when it had come to Naruto's own social woes had been solved easily only because Wolf had helped him be better around girls, and the fact that most of the women he ever interacted with were fully capable of killing him only made it easier for him to know his role when dealing with them so to speak.

Otacon was just an awkward guy, and was so due to a past trauma. It wasn't his fault. The fact that the daughter of aforementioned past trauma, that he cared for very deeply, was sitting right next to him only made the whole thing worse.

*SQUAWK*

Both Raiden and Naruto cringed at the sound of Emma's parrot going off, right before Naruto went off at it again, "I'm gonna throw that fucking thing into the water if I have to hear that one more time."

"Seriously, don't touch my bird." Emma said, turning for long enough to glare at Naruto and get her point across. She didn't particularly intimidate him in the slightest, but it was probably best not to piss off the brilliant computer programmer while they were trying to sabotage an all-encompassing AI that was going to censor all information in the world if it got up and running, "He's not hurting you."

"He's hurting my damn ears." Naruto replied before getting Otacon's attention to come over to him so that they could whisper while Emma was still inputting code, "And she's officially said more words to me and made eye contact with me longer than she has with you. Fix it!" He hissed out in conclusion.

"How?" Socially discomfited in normal situations as he was, Otacon really didn't know what he was supposed to do to fix an issue like this between his stepsister twelve years in the making.

"Apologize for leaving or something! I don't know! She's your stepsister, not mine! I only know how mine works most of the time at best!"

"_You_ wouldn't apologize if it was you!" Otacon snapped in a low whisper, pointing in Naruto's face, "You don't apologize to anybody for anything even when you know you're wrong, even to Catherine!"

Naruto had no rebuttal for that, but it didn't matter, "That's not the point! You do apologize, so go do it. Even if you thought you were right about what you did, it doesn't matter, she just wants to hear you say it and mean it."

"So you want me to lie to her?"

"I can hear everything you two idiots are saying." Emma said, taking off her glasses for a moment to rub her eyes before getting back to work, "This floor has a really good echo." At that she heard a few noises of indication from the keyboard and her jaw dropped, "No, no, no! What do you mean 90%?"

"What's the matter?" Raiden asked as he walked over to her, apparently being the only person that she was on relatively decent terms with, "What happened to the virus?"

"The worm cluster didn't finish uploading." Emma said, resting her face down in her arms in a disenfranchised manner, "…I should have known better than to trust one that I didn't make myself for something this big."

"So it didn't work?" Naruto asked rhetorically. Emma's reaction was enough of an indicator that whatever was supposed to have happened didn't work, "Fine. Fuck it, it looks like we're doing this old-school, with bullets and explosions."

Taking that as his cue, Raiden pushed himself off of the desk that was nearby Emma and followed Naruto out into the hallway towards the elevator that seemed to be perpetually sealed off, "So what's the plan?"

"Take the elevator down into Arsenal Gear and kick everyone's ass until we get to Solidus." Naruto said before pulling out his HF Blade, "Then I'm gonna cut his head off."

"What?" Raiden said in disbelief. That couldn't possibly be legitimate. He had to be joking, "That's your plan? That's a terrible plan! I think I can safely say that's the worst plan I've ever heard in my life!"

At that, Naruto paused right in front of the elevator door and turned around to look at Raiden questioningly, "…It's not really that good is it?" Naruto asked/admitted at the same time, "Huh, you're right. Well, how about we-? Oh my Kami, what the hell's that?" Raiden turned around to see the Cyborg Ninja and then screamed out in pain as he found himself electrocuted from behind into sweet unconsciousness.

Olga's face appeared through the visor of her helmet as she watched Raiden drop to the floor, "I could have done that myself and you wouldn't have had to deal with the whole him not trusting you thing once he woke up again." She was rather miffed that he'd intentionally interrupted her stealthy attack just to land a cheap shot of his own, "What was the purpose of that?" She said as she started taking off her ninja equipment in order to jump back into her BDUs.

"What the hell qualifies you to hit him and I can't?" Naruto said as he checked to make sure that Raiden hadn't really hurt himself, only to stop when he saw the Russian femme fatale in her black bra and panties. He'd never seen her that undressed before, and that was one good-looking mother of a child, "…And this is the woman that had a baby."

"I had to train right afterwards for this mission and to kill you while still doing operations with my mercenaries." Olga groused, not even bothering to tell Naruto to look away from her. He wouldn't have done it anyway and she knew it, "I'd better be in peak condition after all the work I did."

'Stop staring. What's wrong with you?' Naruto tried to reason with himself, lifting a fist to punch himself if it came to that, 'She just tried to kill you forty-five minutes ago. Stop looking at her ass before she tries to do it again.'

"Pervert." Instead of saying anything to Olga after her snide comment, Naruto pointed his index and middle fingers at her and feigned shooting a gun at her several times, complete with muted sound effects, "You wish you had the heart to shoot me."

'It's not shooting that I want to do to you.' Naruto thought to himself dryly as Olga started pulling on her fatigues. That meant that the 'gawk at the sexy young woman' portion of the evening was complete and it was time to get back to business, "Alright. You're the last straggler I think. So once you get down there they'll take off. I'll hide with Mr. Dead Weight here until you can lead them away from the door."

"You're certain that you can do this?" She sounded a touch concerned despite the fact that she'd already signed off on their upcoming approach. The timing for such a course of action was very specific. He'd be somehow hiding in outright plain sight, and she was curious as to what made him think it'd be that easy. The amount of things that could go wrong in such a short window of time would have made a more reasonable man back down.

He had always been like that though.

"Look at it this way. If I can't you can try to kill me again to cover your own tracks and you can keep a closer eye on Raiden when I drop him to run." Naruto said as he scooped up Raiden underneath one arm to walk into the elevator. That was going to be one pissed off man when he woke back up, "Hell, shoot me for real if you have to."

That didn't reassure her very much as she followed into the elevator behind him, preparing to descend into the belly of the beast that was Arsenal Gear.

XxX

(Shell 1 – Strut E – Helipad)

With no need for the hostages any longer, they had callously been left behind in the meeting hall, still all blindfolded, bound, and gagged as they had been during Raiden's past attempt to locate the position of the President.

It's funny how a little thing like a razor-sharp kunai can quickly fix a problem that big, as that was what Otacon used to swiftly cut all of the zip-ties and free the unfortunate bystanders to the Sons of Liberty's revolution. There was nothing more that they could have done to keep Big Shell standing. When Arsenal Gear took off, the entire facility was going down.

Still though, it was an orderly trip to the helicopter as they all boarded the cargo hold of the Kasatka transport so that they could be flown away.

Switching on the engines to warm them up, Otacon sighed and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses as he turned the lights of the vehicle on. Night had finally fallen and it had been a long day. His part as a direct participant in the whole thing was almost over. Even though he'd still be support, now there wasn't anyone tech-related to assist Snake or Naruto any longer.

Neither of them were particularly techno-savvy to say the least.

Naruto was infinitely better than Snake because at least Naruto could do basic computer things to get his way, but that wasn't saying much because Snake was particularly dense in that setting despite his IQ of 180.

It was past that point however though.

Emma was seated next to him, still trying not to speak to him and doing her best to refrain from looking at him and acknowledging his presence. He had a litany of topics ready to lecture her on, about being careful about what kind of work she got into and everything that came with it, but he didn't want to start a fight.

Why was he so bad at this sort of thing?

"Alright. We'll be back in Manhattan in a matter of minutes. At least now these people can put this nightmare behind them." Otacon said as he flipped a few more switches.

"Not if the terrorists win." Emma grumbled off to the side, making Otacon go silent again. She was being harsh and she knew it. This wasn't the way to make him see her as an adult and she knew it. She had to try and be a bigger person even if she did feel wronged, "Look, Hal-." She stopped when she saw something abnormal coming their way, "Oh my God!"

At the edge of the heliport, Vamp seemed to rise up as if he'd ran up to that level from the walls and slowly pulled out a rather large knife before running right at the helicopter.

"I thought Raiden killed him!" Otacon said, forgoing the precautions and trying to get the chopper off of the ground as fast as he could. That wasn't exactly a quick process though, and Vamp's straight-line speed at a full sprint was more than fast enough to reach them before they ascended.

Latching onto the pilot side of the vehicle he punched straight through the window and grabbed Otacon around the throat, "Sorry, but if harming you is what it takes to force Rapture and Solid Snake to back down, or to get to the Raiden boy, you have to suffer."

The grip of Vamp felt like it was breaking Otacon's neck as he let go of the controls and the helicopter swayed wildly before Emma steadied the controls as best she could. She wasn't a pilot, but she knew how to keep them from dying in an errant accident, "Hal!"

Otacon's eyes began to go bloodshot due to the blood vessels being strained due to the pressure on his head, but Vamp's grip soon slackened once a bullet passed through the side of his head, forcing it to violently jerk to the right. And then he dropped to the ground motionless.

The sound of the shot was muffled by the sound of the helicopter blades, and since she was already on the helipad anyway it was something that the world's best sniper could have done blindfolded.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk." Wolf clicked her tongue to herself, walking over to the downed Vamp, holding her trusty rifle that was still hot to the touch at the barrel, "I guess it paid to remain behind after all instead of going down into Arsenal." As she got close to the helicopter she took notice of Otacon sputtering to regain his breath in the front seat, "Hello Dr. Emmerich. It's been quite a while."

Emma at the time had been making sure that Otacon was safely getting his air back after nearly getting it squeezed out of him by a super-strong Dead Cell member. When she saw Sniper Wolf however, she jumped back onto her side of the chopper and looked ready to jump out and run away, "Ah! It's you!"

Wolf seemed confused at first until she realized that Emma probably still saw her as one of the notable Sons of Liberty members, "No, no. Calm down. I'm not on their side."

Otacon coughed a few times more before finally taking notice of just who had saved his life with a well timed sniper's bullet, "Wolf?" He had been informed that she was alive, but seeing her again in person really affected him physically, "It's good to see you. I'm glad you're alright, especially now."

"Likewise Dr. Emmerich." Wolf said with bit of a roguish laugh, "Although you probably wouldn't be alright if I had been a few seconds slower in meeting up with you."

"So you're not on their side." Otacon sounded relieved, especially since the last time they'd met she'd been on the side of Liquid's rebellion and had been pitted against him by proxy of her and the rest of FOXHOUND taking all of the Metal Gear REX scientists captive, "Thank goodness you're with us."

"I'm not technically with you either." She said, seemingly taking a bit of pleasure out of confusing the Emmerich pair, "I'm with Olga, and I'm for my little probie. Olga's the only reason I'm here, and Naruto is the only reason I decided to cover your sister. You have all of these people and no one to protect them in case-."

"Look out!"

Wolf barely bothered turning around, pointing her rifle at Vamp as he seemed to rise from the dead like an old Dracula movie. She didn't even let him get his feet entirely under him before a bullet once again went right through his head, this time through the front, depositing him back onto the cold helipad with a thud.

Curiously, the sniper looked down at Vamp before shaking her head and flipping her long hair. She turned back to the chopper before chambering another round with her bolt-action rifle and shooting Vamp again in the head for good measure.

"As I was saying." Wolf said after doing so, "I will ride with you and yours back to land." At that the entire facility began to shake violently. That was their cue to get themselves the hell out of there, "…I do not wish to remain here for obvious reasons."

"Y-Yeah!" Otacon said, scrambling to open the door so that Wolf could get in, "Come on, we only have a few seconds I'd wager before this place comes down." Wolf gifted him with a beautiful smile that almost melted his legs before she stopped and turned around to shoot Vamp in the head one more time. This time he hadn't so much as twitched to warrant her wrath, "Why'd you shoot him that time?"

"Double tap." Wolf said simply before getting into the Kasatka before he could try getting up again. If shooting him in the head once didn't kill him she wasn't sure if two other times would do so, and she didn't really have anything else on her person that would possibly kill someone that was able to live through that. Speaking of which, "Wait." Before shutting the door she shot him one more time for good measure, "Okay, take off."

Otacon gulped at remembering how brutal Wolf could be in battle before doing as she'd instructed before Big Shell could begin crashing down into the water. From the open cargo door that Wolf hadn't fully closed yet, all of the hostages murmured and chattered in fear and horror as they saw the massive facility collapse into the sea.

Sniper Wolf was ignoring all of that, instead taking careful aim to do one more thing before it all disappeared underwater.

XxX

So would this mark the third time today that Vamp had been killed or a higher number? The first time being from the ricochet due to Fortune's luck that hit him in the head and torso, and the second time being after he'd fought Raiden in the flooded portion of Shell 2.

Or was each time Wolf shot him supposed to count as a separate death? Because if it did he was up past more than three deaths in a 24-hour period.

It really didn't matter since there wasn't a limit to how many times he could die anyway, so it was more trivial than anything else.

Back on the helipad, Vamp had been lying flat on his back, bleeding out onto the ground from the three holes in his head that somehow seemed to heal up already, "Okay. That is _extremely_ annoying." He remarked in an almost bored manner, opening his eyes before a gunshot rang out and his lights were put out yet again at the behest of a well-aimed sniper's bullet.

The next time he woke up from being 'killed' he'd be floating aimlessly 20 miles offshore of Manhattan.

XxX

(Onboard Arsenal Gear – Jejunum Level)

"_Jack! Jack answer me! Jack what's wrong? Jack!"_

Hearing the sound of Rosemary in his Codec, Raiden was roused from his very uncomfortable state of unconsciousness, finding himself lying on a cold, metal floor, "Ugh." Why did he taste static? Rolling over onto his belly, Raiden pushed himself up while holding his head while answering his girlfriend, "I'm fine Rose… I-." He stopped when he remembered what happened and apparently saw the perpetrator nearby, "You!"

With breakneck speed he lunged at Naruto who had his back turned, seemingly on the lookout for something. The white-haired soldier grabbed his neck from behind in a chokehold before suddenly cracking his neck. The blond went limp before vanishing in a puff of smoke.

"Oi! That shit hurt!"

Turning around on the catwalk that they were apparently on, Raiden saw another very displeased Naruto holding his neck gingerly, "Wha-?" That first Naruto wasn't real? Was he stoned?

"He was standing guard over you while I went to check this place out! What the hell man?" Naruto said indignantly at the misfortune of his poor clone and his untimely demise, "Fuck that hurt!"

"You knocked me out!"

"I had to!"

"Why!?"

"…" Naruto had opened his mouth to continue arguing, but stopped when he'd hit a dead end. He really didn't have a good reason for shocking Raiden to sleep, "…I don't think it matters why, because no matter what I say you're still going to try to shoot at me."

"I'm really thinking about it." Raiden admitted, fingers twitching to the pistol he had at his holster, "…But you didn't kill me, and I'm not captured, and we're inside Arsenal Gear, and I don't have time to fight you right now."

At that point he started taking in his surroundings and found himself to be a tad in awe. They were standing on a lone catwalk in a vast room. Vast was an understatement of a word as a matter of fact. It was positively mammoth. And lining the walls there were over two dozen Metal Gear RAY models in holding, prepared to be deployed if need be.

"Good God." Raiden muttered to himself. What a sight to awaken to. What were they supposed to do about all of that, if anything? He wasn't sure if he had enough explosives to plant on those things to take even half of them down.

"I still can't find Snake and he isn't answering." Naruto muttered, looking over the railing of the catwalk down below, "There aren't any sentries in here because these RAYs aren't supposed to be run by people. They're unmanned if you can believe it." He let out a humorless chuckle, "Kind of scary right?"

The main defense force of Arsenal Gear. They made this ship the ultimate mobile fortress.

Raiden's hand slowly reached up to his ear so that he could talk, "Rose… I've got to talk to the Colonel."

"_Jack… he's… indisposed right now."_

What? At a time like this? During a mission in a heated time like this? When he'd been down and out of it for a prolonged period of time?

"Kitty found something out that you might not like if you're checking in with your upper brass." Naruto said, a dour look on his face as he saw the expression on Raiden's face change due to whatever he'd been told, "She said there's a frequency to your girlfriend, but there isn't a second one to this Colonel of yours, and I don't think you've been speaking to them on the same line."

He hadn't been. There had been different frequencies to talk to Colonel and Rose, but that was protocol right? They had different jobs and were stationed in different places of the mission HQ weren't they?

"What are you telling me?" Raiden asked Naruto guardedly, "I'm not following you."

Shaking his head, Naruto asked another question, "You've got nanomachines in you, don't you?" Raiden nodded, unsure as to where this was going, "Well that explains it. Thos stupid things can do a lot. Some of those things are good, but since you're in the U.S. military I know who gave you yours, and yours do just as much bad for you as they do good. The Colonel of yours isn't real."

"How's that even possible?"

Naruto was silent for a second before the answer seemed to be given to him via his own Codec connection with Catherine, "These are a newer model than the ones they were trying to test when I was in FOXHOUND. You ever wonder why all of that computer stuff you could do, like hacking into terminals and getting your map layouts of Big Shell were so easy? The nanomachines are in your brain too. Your C.O. is a hallucination."

"He gave me orders!" Raiden disputed. He wasn't going to accept that. He'd been listening to a real person since this mission had started. He had to be. Everything that had happened couldn't have been so cut and dry like that.

"Have you ever seen your Colonel in person?"

"No."

"Have you ever seen anyone that's seen the Colonel in person?"

Raiden opened his mouth to speak but this time he was at an immediate loss of rebuttal. With no defense with foundation, Raiden realized that Rosemary had been able to hear the entire thing, and she hadn't spoken up once, "…Rose. I need you to tell me something. Tell me the truth. Please don't lie to me."

"…"

"Is the Colonel in the same building as you?"

"_No."_

"If you're support for this mission you should have been in contact with him during the staff briefing. Have you ever seen the Colonel?"

"_No."_

"Does the Colonel exist?"

"…_No Jack. He doesn't."_

He felt sick. Raiden sank against the railing of the catwalk with a clang and sat down in a heap on the floor, holding his head, "Things like that aren't possible."

A hollow look came to Naruto's eyes as he smiled a smile that didn't reach past his mouth, "Yeah they are." Naruto lifted a finger and tapped himself on the temple, "Every day. The Patriots. It's never enough. They've got this country, and it's never enough. Nobody knows that they rule everything outside of a few people in the government who just go with it and it's not enough. I don't know why they picked you to do this mission, but they picked you."

"These Patriots again…" It was hard to comprehend. It was impossible, "I keep hearing this. From you. From Emma. From Snake. From Otacon. From Vamp. Just what the hell is this?"

"I don't know." Naruto said, turning his back to Raiden, hands laced behind his neck, "If I told you I've been dealing with this for the last five or six years and I still don't know who these people are or what they want, how they got to where they are, or anything like that, would you feel any better?" Raiden didn't look up from where he was sitting, but he shook his head, "They took something more precious than anything from someone I care about, just to get their cooperation. They do this to everybody, not just you. It's all a game or something."

The world's biggest game of chess. And they seemed to circulate opponents once every few years when they rubbed someone the wrong way with their methods. First it was Liquid Snake, and now it was Solidus Snake. For all they knew there could have been someone even before then!

"It's not a hallucination. You're not crazy." Naruto said, trying to soften the blow of telling someone that they had voices in their head, "The nanos are still machines, so your Colonel is more like an AI or something. So it was talking to you, handing you the things that the Patriots wanted you to hear. Your girlfriend could hear it too, so don't worry about that."

"I don't want to talk about her right now." Raiden could hear Rosemary gasp over the line, but he paid it no mind. He was not in the mood to hash things out with her at the moment, "You know a lot about this."

"They got me way back, about six years ago I think." Naruto said, looking up at the ceiling high up in the air above their heads, "I think I was sixteen or seventeen. They plucked me off of a battlefield in Iraq when I was wounded to do experiments on me."

"What? Why?"

"You've seen some of what I can do right? The clones, the sticking to stuff, the electricity, this." Naruto concluded, holding up a Rasengan in one hand, "And there were other reasons too. I don't think they found out about the worst thing about me before something happened and I got out. I still have nightmares, you know?"

It was clear that he didn't want to talk about that from how he left it at that, and Raiden did know what he was getting at, "I know. I know more than you can imagine. Trust me." Hearing about someone else's perpetual nightmares started making him think about his own that he tried his damndest to hide, "I don't want to bring it up. They're terrible things."

"You don't have to tell me, it's your business. Just don't be mad at your girl for lying to you or not telling you, or whatever you want to call it." Naruto said, getting Raiden's attention again, "That's what they do. They take people and use 'em. Any way they can to get what they want. She can't fight, so she didn't have a choice. They _are_ the government, so there was no one she could run to anyway."

If nothing else, that gave Raiden something to think about.

But Naruto himself had something else to think about upon hearing the echo of a door slide open on the ground level of the RAY hangar. Leaning over the edge of their catwalk, Naruto looked down and first saw a very large rail gun enter first.

The highly intimidating weapon was followed by a dark-skinned woman with blonde hair and a melancholy expression seemingly perma-etched onto her face as she looked around the room. Fortune. The last one standing out of the Dead Cell organization. All of the others had fallen throughout the day in one way or another.

She was looking for something, and she was quite certain that it was there.

"Everyone but me." She said to herself quietly, "You just keep on taking and taking don't you? You don't know when to stop do you? Your codename is inappropriate Rapture, because all you seem to bring anyone around you is suffering." She saw no living being in the room, but she still started charging up her rail gun before aiming it up at the rafters, "Two years ago you took my father." She fired a shot that was powerful enough to destroy an entire segment of catwalk, sending it crashing down to the floor dozens of feet below, "You took my husband." Another shot at another section with similar results, "My happy life. My entire family. My entire team. One by one, and I'm the only one left."

Each of these things was punctuated with a blast from her rail gun that decimated what she was aiming at.

Both Naruto and Raiden were dreading having to show themselves with that wicked weapon being what would await them, but she seemed entirely certain that Naruto was there despite having no proof of it. But that didn't stop her from destroying everything in the deep sea dock earlier that day.

And it wouldn't stop her here either from shooting down every single place they had to hide until she found them, hit them, or discovered nothing, "Raiden, you should leave." Naruto eventually said after another blast took down another catwalk, "She wants me. She doesn't care about you, or this Sons of Liberty mission."

"What? No!" Raiden replied, "Are you crazy? You can't fight her! Bullets can't hit her!"

"Have you tried _not_ using bullets?"

"That rail gun will annihilate you before you get close, and the discharge will kill you even if you _do_ get close!"

"First of all, I'm definitely fast enough to get close. Second of all, I screw around with electricity and you think I'm worried about a gun's discharge? I shot down a goddamn Harrier four hours ago with lightning!" If he didn't fight her she was just going to keep shooting down the upper levels until they did something or got caught. Facing her was all he could do, "I'm just glad we got this far before all hell broke loose. Now go."

Before Raiden could stop him, Naruto pulled himself over the edge of their catwalk and did a nosedive straight to the floor, at least a sixty foot fall, before flipping through and landing in a crouch safely on the ground.

Fortune's eyes were firmly affixed on him, and when he looked up he could see nothing but pure disdain and hatred in them.

"Nice to finally meet you Colonel Jackson's wife." Naruto said in acknowledgment. She was the spouse of the only commanding officer that he'd ever truly respected down to the core. It was a damn shame that it was going to have to come to this.

Before he could say another word, Fortune fired right at him, but missed, devastating the floor where he'd been standing with the ultra-high speed projectile launched by her gun, "Don't you dare say his name after what you've done!"

This was going to be one of _those_ fights wasn't it?

"I don't have time for this." Naruto muttered to himself after avoiding the first of the devastating rail gun shots that were sure to come his way.

Back up on one of the few remaining catwalks, Raiden wiped a bead of nervous sweat from his brow that formed involuntarily, "This is not good." He said to himself. Did he stay or did he go? When he did go, what was he to do from there with everything that had been told to him?

What now?

* * *

><p><strong>Coming down to the wire here.<strong>

**The final conflicts of the arc are coming to a head and there's a lot of awesome that's about to happen if you ask me. But then again, I'm not exactly an unbiased party in that regard or anything so who knows?**

**Let's get this done shall we? **

**Other than that, I just played Metal Gear Rising: Revengence and I've got to say that the soundtrack makes that game. It's a hack-and-slash, and a lot don't really have a dynamic, ass-kicking soundtrack to go with it in the right situation. Not this game.**

**The boss fights feel more fun because of the music especially, and just how outrageous some of the abilities of the bad guys are. It's short though. I beat it on hard in about 8 hours, so it's not really something that's to own.**

**I do own it because I will be playing it repeatedly when I want to destroy something. I wanted a game I could just pop in and chop up some random enemies for a while now so this works out perfectly.**

**Kenchi out.**


	29. Beyond Your Control

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear.

Kojima you magnificent bastard, The Phantom Pain is probably going to be my gaming highlight of the year and beyond given your track record with the other Solid games. I just want it to be a tad longer than Metal Gear Solid 4 was. I can burn through that game on 'The Boss' difficulty in like no time flat by now, so I'm counting on you brother.

Don't let me down!

**Chapter 29: Beyond Your Control**

* * *

><p>"Finally decided to scurry out of hiding did you?" Fortune snapped upon watching Naruto dodge her first shot, "I've heard of rats abandoning a sinking ship, but not a sinking base."<p>

"Well I would have tried to get the drop on you, but I can't shoot you, and you were looking right in the direction I was hiding in the whole time." Naruto said, standing up from where he'd been crouching down from his landing, "I don't have any history with you like I did with Old Boy and Chinaman, and I actually liked those bastards a bit."

"And your point is?" Fortune asked, raising an eyebrow and wondering if she would have a shot at hitting him if she fired right then, "Are you going to beg? Plead with me that you didn't kill my father and get my husband killed?"

Patience was something Naruto was thin on normally. His level of stress was at an all-time high, so at this point it had the width of a razor. Too many bad things were going to happen if he lingered here.

He didn't have time to be nice.

"No. I'm saying if you don't put that stupid cannon down and leave me alone I'm going to kill you, okay? Do you understand that?" Naruto snapped irritably, "I'm not going to reason with you, because I don't know you. I'm not going to try and save you, because I don't have the time. I'm going to kill you, I'm going to walk away, and that'll be that."

"You think you can kill me boy?" Fortune snarled at him. He didn't seem to have a touch of remorse. What about all that Dead Cell had been through due to his betrayal? What did he come for? To rub it in their faces? What was the point?

"I know I can fucking kill you." Naruto didn't bother pulling up his arm-mounted weapon. He wasn't going to waste Solar Gun shots on her when there was no more sunlight to replenish his supply. He was going to do this the old-fashioned way, "But first-."

Naruto pulled up his submachine gun and fired every last round he had in his magazine, each bullet veering off-course away from Fortune, nothing harming her until he finally heard the empty click, signifying that the clip was spent.

She merely lifted an eyebrow at him and didn't bat an eye at the waste of ammunition that had been sent flying at her with intent to deal death, "Are you done?"

All he could really do in response was shrug and eject the magazine before stashing his gun back from where he'd taken it, "Had to see."

"I long for someone powerful enough to end my life in battle." Fortune said as she began to charge her rail gun for another shot, even as it aimed to the ground, "But for this fight alone, I'm putting that wish aside. You need to die first."

"Walk away. I'm Dead Cell's kiss of death. And not why you think, but you won't believe me when I tell you, so let's just do this."

"My pleasure."

Naruto quickly dove out of the way once he saw her swing the gun up at him and forced Fortune to miss her shot, but instead of fully charging it for subsequent blasts she quick-fired it, only getting enough of a charge to send something flying Naruto's way.

It kept him from getting close to keep her from making her shots easier, and luckily there was no shortage of space form him to move around in. Each pulsing blast hit nothing but empty air and the back wall of the RAY hangar.

Feeling that she'd gotten his timing down, Fortune aimed her gun for where she thought he would go and shot at the ground, causing Naruto to stop and cover his face to protect himself from anything hitting his eyes, "Fool." A quick second charge aimed his way had no chance of missing.

Until it did, and she found that she'd shot an empty case that had contained the bullets for the machine guns of the unmanned RAY units before they'd been fully stocked. She should have known better than to believe that such an attack would do him in so early. If it were that simple someone would have killed this bastard a long time ago.

It was Naruto's ninja magic that had constantly been cursed by Chinaman, and she understood why. Especially that little trick of the eyes that he'd just pulled.

A clang made her turn her head up to see Naruto hanging from a rafted directly above her, having thrown a kunai down at her skull, only for it to… bounce off of nothing?

It wasn't just bullets and explosions she turned to duds. She could deflect a kunai, from that close?

"Nice try." Fortune said before suddenly firing up and bringing down the entire rafter on top of herself in an effort to kill the fleet-footed shinobi-soldier. Even with all of the heavy pieces of twisted metal, sparks, and fire that fell all around her, nothing touched her.

Naruto managed to escape by previously jury-rigging a ninja wire swing to maneuver his way out of his predicament before he'd ever taken that position. His swing sent him over to one of the Metal Gear RAYs, suspended in its own slot in the wall of the vast hangar, of which there were 25 in all, "The only woman that can get away with shooting at me is Russian!" Naruto shouted as he avoided another shot during his swing, "It's a good thing you have such a big gun because your aim sucks!"

Though he was taunting while dodging from above, Naruto was pissed. This should have been long over already.

'This is bullshit! She didn't even know it was coming!' Naruto thought to himself after sticking to the face of the RAY he'd chosen to land on, 'An automatic defense? It has to be!' He heard the charging whir of the rail gun and saw Fortune taking aim at him again, "Wait…"

"Die!"

"You stupid bitch!" Naruto yelled at her as he jumped off of the RAY and let her shot miss him. Instead it destroyed the head of the mobile weapon and set off a klaxon that caused the hangar to lock down, "You're gonna kill both of us!"

"_Aniki she really screwed you this time. There are a ton of electronic signatures activating in that hangar with you."_

Please be Arsenal Tengu, please be Arsenal Tengu, please be Arsenal Tengu-.

"_I think the RAYs systems were activated when Fortune destroyed the first one. They're going to try to defend themselves!"_

"Fuck!" Naruto shouted as he landed on a different catwalk that barely seemed to be holding on by a threat. From his vantage point as he looked around the hangar, the main lights dimmed with flashing yellow and red warning lights letting him know just how ugly this situation was about to get, "I came to New York to save my crew and save my best frienemy's sexy Russian ass! Not to fight a hangar full of Metal Gear RAYs on a floating metal deathtrap!"

Well that was too bad, because that was what was happening right now.

"I am so tired…" Naruto said as nasty red energy started to leak out of his body, "I'm tired of getting blamed for everything… I'm tired of messing up worse when I try to fix things… I'm tired of fighting people I don't want to fight… I'M TIRED OF ALL OF THIS!"

The energy began to form in a solid outline around his body in the shape of a fox, and two long tails sprouted from the energy shroud just as Fortune was taking aim at him again. She had no idea what to make of it, thinking of him as the devil incarnate if she didn't need any other motivation to believe that Naruto was an evil man.

He had to be some kind of monster. No human being could produce such an unnatural feeling of hate and rage, "Even his teeth and eyes changed…" Steeling herself she charged her gun to take him out, "…Go to hell."

Before she could shoot, her attention was taken away by one of the newly awakened RAYs firing its machine gun at her, every shot missing as if it were deflecting away from her. They were attacking her? Damn it, they hadn't been programmed with all of the friendly identities of the Sons of Liberty yet. They would probably only easily recognize Solidus and/or Ocelot as friendlies.

So for all intents and purposes they were trying to kill her too. That was fine. Clearly her 'luck' was holding out just like always, because their gunfire from the full automatic cannons on their bodies still couldn't give her a scratch.

Without saying a word she shifted her aim to the nearest RAY and shot it right in the head, destroying its AI core and bringing its short existence as a mass-produced model Metal Gear to an end. Fortune would kill them all one by one if they kept getting in the way of her battle.

Naruto on the other hand was taking a more active approach to dealing with the RAYs. Since he wasn't really bullet or missile-proof, Naruto relied on his raw speed and nigh-animalistic instinct to avoid most of the gunfire filling the hangar. The mechanical roar of the machines only seemed to anger him further.

"_Take out their heads!"_ Catherine warned him over the feed, wondering why everything she could see through the visual connection in Naruto's suit was tinted red. Was he bleeding on the camera or something? One second the picture had been crisp and clear, the next she was observing it all through a color lens, _"They're unmanned so instead of taking out the whole thing you just have to damage their 'brains' enough to shut them down!"_

Landing on the ground he charged directly through the legs of as many that had activated themselves to fight, finally finding one that tried to stomp down on him to crush him. Naruto merely dodged and ran up the leg, circling around it as he scaled the body. As he reached the head though he had to jump off as a single horribly powerful rail gun shell pierced the head of it and brought the Metal Gear down.

In mid-flight, Naruto looked down and saw that it had been Fortune who'd tried to kill two birds with one stone; stopping a RAY and trying to kill him. Needless to say, he was not amused and used his chakra tails to avert his descent pattern to land right on her.

Another RAY stepped in his path and opened its four sided mouth before charging a high-pressure water cannon that could cut through metal. Naruto remembered seeing that from how the original RAY model destroyed the tanker that started all of this years ago.

Not here, it wasn't shooting that damn thing off at him like that. The speed of his fall was good enough that he was able to land on the head of the attacking RAY hard enough to force its mouth to close, basically making it blow its own head off from the inside out with its own water cannon.

The sound of rockets alerted him to the sight of three more RAYs firing off cluster missiles. Good lord, there were 25 of these things? All you would have needed was three or four to possibly take over an entire city. Why did Arsenal Gear need this many?

The entirety of Naruto's eyes turned blood red and a third chakra tail sprouted. Today had been enough of a clusterfuck, and all of these coming on at the same time was just the icing on the cake. Letting out his sheer frustrations in one move, Naruto let loose a horrible roar that actually stopped the missiles in midair and had them drop to the ground and all over the multitude of active RAYs in the hangar.

Fortune couldn't help but stop and stare, whether in awe or in horror she had no idea at the moment. The entire hangar seemed to be bathed in flames, looking more like a textbook scene out of Armageddon than an interior portion of a warship. She fully ignored the missiles that had dropped around her as they had defused around her before they'd even touched anywhere around her.

"That isn't a man." She said to herself as she could see the _creature_ bathed in red, standing atop one of the deactivated Metal Gear RAYs like a predator overlooking its hunting ground for more prey, "That isn't even a monster." Demon would be a more accurate description.

More gunfire filled the hangar, actually hitting the prime target of the day several times. An unpleased Naruto jumped down off of the head of the RAY he'd been on down onto its shoulder where he grabbed onto the massive fin-like arm. Metal groaned and tore apart as Naruto ripped the limb free of the joints with sheer Kyuubi-charged strength before hurling it straight ahead at a RAY that had been charging through the metal wreckage and debris with its head down for a death rush.

The point of the fin slammed into its open, roaring mouth and the finishing touches were lain upon it by a flying kick from Naruto off the back end of the fin that just shredded through the remainder of the head like a razor blade through a grape.

What was left of Naruto's inhibitions scanned the area and he could see evidence of… about nine or ten 'dead' Metal Gear RAYs strewn in various manners around the hangar. And there were still more coming, ten more and counting since they all hadn't been activated yet.

His anger continued to build, but instead of drawing upon more of the hate-charged chakra within him he started letting off a visible electric charge from his entire body, mixing with the fox cloak surrounding his form. At the sight of the incoming enemy vehicles, Naruto let out a second metal-peeling roar.

And all hell broke loose.

XxX

(Elsewhere on Arsenal Gear – Ileum Level – Meryl's Quarters)

Every single device that ran on electricity in the room shut off for several seconds before everything came back on as if nothing had happened. Strange indeed. There shouldn't have been any problems with electricity or any kind of power. Arsenal had three self-sustaining sources to run it.

"What the hell was that?" Meryl asked, the redhead now wearing a fully equipped Arsenal Tengu power suit, "Did you feel that Snake or was it just me?"

Finally free from the confines of his trusty cardboard box, Snake stretched his tense joints out in preparation for more active infiltration outside, "Do you think there are any bugs in the system that Solidus didn't know about before taking off?"

Meryl shook her head while contemplating whether or not to put on the helmet that went with the rest of the suit, "No, he had completely accurate information on everything that was happening with Arsenal Gear. If there had been anything that someone could have been concerned about he would have put off the operation to take it for himself."

"Completely accurate information." Snake said as if the concept of flawless intelligence on anything, especially a top-secret project such as this one, was impossible, "And how exactly did he get this information. Do you know?"

"It came from Ocelot's sources." Meryl said with a shrug, "You know how that guy is I'm sure. All of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries adore the guy as some old-school Soviet super-solider, so none of them ever really questioned anything. Solidus just lapped it all up, and not a bit of anything he reported on was wrong."

There was a problem with that. There were supposed to holes in any kind of intelligence. The fact of the matter was though, that the Sons of Liberty hadn't hit a smidge of legitimate opposition until 'Team Philanthropy' showed up. The entire process of taking over Big Shell and turning around to set up defenses didn't result in a single death or a snag until Snake, Naruto, and Raiden started running amok and tearing things up.

"You do realize that the Raiden kid is a pawn of the Patriots don't you?" Snake asked, getting a jaw-dropped expression to form on Meryl's face, "Everything he says just doesn't add up. He thinks he's in FOXHOUND first of all. No matter what, Catherine can't tap into his Codec conversations when he's talking to his commanding officer, because he's talking to the nanomachines inside of his own body."

"This isn't good." Meryl said, strapping her Desert Eagle holsters onto her person as they still remained her weapons of choice, "I already know what you're trying to say. This entire mission is set up for the Sons of Liberty to fail, but we knew that. Olga's supposed to have been helping Raiden along,

"We already knew that too." Snake said, wondering about how Meryl would feel if he started smoking right in front of her. It had been a while since he'd lit up, "The reason the kid wanted to come here more than anything was to make sure that if nothing else none of you got killed. He's kind of-." Snake stopped talking in exchange for trying to listen for something through the door.

Meryl looked at him strangely as he crept to the door and placed his ear against the metal surface, wondering what his problem was, "What's wrong?"

Snake didn't answer at first. The bandanna-wearing war hero could hear the sound outside of spurs and a man whistling an old western soundtrack tune. Oh man, that was the most obvious trap that had probably ever been set for him.

But damn it he really wanted to shoot the person he thought was outside.

"Ocelot." Snake growled under his breath. If only it could be so easy. But the second he opened that door he'd probably find a recording rolling down the hall with a squad full of Tengu waiting on him outside, "…I hate that bastard."

Then again no one was really a fan of Revolver Ocelot.

Meryl opened up a vent on the wall by a floor big enough for Snake to fit through and gestured for him to go on through. Nodding, Snake got down and started crawling his way through the duct as Meryl closed it after him, "Good hunting." She said before heading outside of the door to her room to make appearances again. Once she got out there though, she found that it wasn't Ocelot it was Johnny.

She could tell because everyone else left on Arsenal Gear aside from the top brass wore Tengu suits. Johnny still had the same fatigues and balaclava that the normal Gurlukovich Mercenaries wore due to not being trusted with the high-tech suits.

"Uh, hi. Is you-know-who still there?" Johnny asked, waving and giving what she figured to be a smile from the look of his eyes through his facemask. Hanging from his wrist she could see a mess of dogtags that had probably been making the sound that Snake figured had been spurs.

"Johnny." Meryl said in a careful tone of voice, "Why were you whistling that song outside just now?"

"Because I think westerns are awesome?" He answered matter-of-factly. To say nothing about the fact that he got seasick, and as long as he was doing something else like remembering a tune to whistle he wouldn't notice his stomach tossing and turning.

Of course he did. Second question, "Have you seen Ocelot?"

"I think he's heading up the patrol after the whole power surge thing. That wasn't supposed to happen was it? All of this stuff is totally pristine." Damn it, so according to what Johnny was saying there was now an active guard out searching the place high and low, "The hangar with the RAYs is locked so no one can get in. Things shouldn't be malfunctioning like that already. We've only been running Arsenal for three hours."

Meryl pinched the bridge of her nose before reaching forward at Johnny's balaclava and pulling it off, "First of all, lose this stupid thing. You're the only person on the ship wearing that uniform, you're not anonymous. Second of all, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Everything you just said was bad. Third, why do think things are malfunctioning already? Do I need to tell you who's been on Arsenal the whole time? I'm surprised nothing malfunctioned sooner."

Johnny just stared at her blankly before kicking at nonexistent dust on the floor, "…Well when you put it that way…"

"Oh my God…" Not for the first time since they'd been introduced, Meryl wanted to go bang her head against something sturdy, "Johnny, just find Ocelot!"

Saluting her frantically with the wrong hand, Johnny turned and took off in one direction before stopping at the end of the hall and running back to the other end where he paused similarly to before prior to running back to her room, "Whoa! Hey, who the hell took out both of those Tengu teams stationed guard in this hall? And where'd that cigarette smell come from?"

XxX

(Jejunum Level – Metal Gear RAY Hangar)

The emergency lights and the fire from the battle that had been fought there were the only things keeping the spacious and wreckage-filled level of Arsenal Gear lit. Aside from the sound of the flames crackling and some of the metal that hadn't fallen from the catwalks groaning, the only other thing that could be heard were the technicians outside trying to find a way to deactivate the security locks from outside to get inside.

Naruto pushed a large amount of metal sheets off of his body and shook himself off to regain his bearings, "Whoa." That last thing he'd done with the Kyuubi's chakra and his electricity manipulation kind of threw him off, "What the hell did I just do?"

Not a single RAY in the hangar was moving. How strange. Naruto tapped on his ear to try and get his Codec going. All he was getting in his ear was static. Eventually turning it off due to annoyance he started looking around.

Did he do this?

Most of the RAYs weren't even destroyed, though a good number of them had been taken out the good old fashioned way. Once again, most of them just weren't moving, as if they'd been deactivated.

"This is you in your element Rapture."

Hearing the sound of Fortune's voice, Naruto looked in her direction to see her slowly walk into view, still holding her massive rail gun threateningly. Cracking his neck to the side, Naruto stood all of the way up and stood ready to make a move as soon as he could.

The lady of Dead Cell gestured to the rampant destruction all around them, "This is all you're good at. Destroying and killing things."

"Uh huh."

"Do you even care? Do you care in the slightest about what you've just done? How much you've ruined here? My point that you've proven to me once and for all."

"No. But then again I stopped caring about everything that came out of your mouth after the little monologue you had before you started shooting me out of the rafters." Naruto said, dragging his thumb across one of his cheeks, "You've practicing this little pity-party bullshit in the mirror for the last six months haven't you? Oh woe is you, like you're the only person that's ever had bad things happen to 'em. Get over yourself."

"Heartless brat. You should shut your mouth now." But even with Fortune's prodding, Naruto didn't shut his mouth. He wasn't done. It had been a long, hard road, and he wasn't going to let little miss raincloud spew her b.s. any longer, "What would you know?"

"You've had a bad year? The last five years of my life have been an exercise in who can fuck Naruto Uzumaki and the people around him the hardest." Naruto could have started listing things off on his fingers if he didn't know that it probably would have gotten him shot at before he finished.

She lost her father. He lost the closest thing he had to one too, and then had someone pretend to be him after they killed him. She miscarried her baby out of grief? His friend got hers kidnapped after the delivery and never even saw her, and he almost let himself get killed just to keep the child alive for a bit longer. Her superiors in the government turned on Dead Cell. What did she think happened to him a minimum of twice already, or was she just that out of the loop?

And that wasn't even counting all of the crap he would have left out for the sake of time.

The thing about it was that he might have felt worse for her if she weren't so overbearing and pitiable about it. Everything that happened to her happened to Olga as well, and she tried to find some sort of camaraderie of pathetic broken doves with what she felt to be her Russian counterpart. But unlike Fortune, Olga hadn't given up. Unlike Fortune, Olga hadn't resigned herself to some sad little tragic role.

If Fortune was looking for Naruto to feel so sorry for things that he at most had a passing role in to the extent that he was going to apologize to _her_ and take his 'punishment' of dying she'd be waiting for a long time.

"Get over yourself lady."

That was the last straw for Fortune who pulled her rail gun up to take aim just when Naruto launched forward a kunai out of reflex before rushing at her. But something was wrong.

CLICK!

Her gun didn't charge, and Naruto's kunai didn't miss this time.

Even Naruto stopped his charge when he saw that his kunai hit home, buried in the left side of her chest almost to the handle. After everything else that had happened, the last thing he'd expected was for that to occur. He was just going to try and beat her to the punch with a Rasengan or something.

Having never been wounded in battle before, Fortune didn't know what she was feeling at first until she looked down and saw the knife sticking out of her body. It actually struck her? Being wounded actually… hurt.

The rail gun fell to the floor from her hands and she sank to one knee, touching at the grave injury inflicted on her, "My luck gave out?"

Naruto just stared at the fallen weapon and was more concerned about why it didn't charge than how his kunai managed to land. He knew his own aim had been dead-on the whole time.

Wait, his Codec, all of the lights, all of the RAY models, the fact that the guards couldn't access the electronic locks to get into the hangar, _and_ the gun? The latter being main reason that he'd never tried to create a clone during the battle?

He knew what he'd done to make all of this happen. He let off one hell of an EMP with his electricity and the Kyuubi's chakra. It was so big it knocked him out of the mindstate that brought about three tails of chakra. That hangar was the size of several city blocks and he'd busted every piece of technology in that joint with sheer force.

Granted, he'd straight-up blown his three-tailed wad with that single electric blast, but given that it had shut down all of the RAYs without him needing to hack through them one-by-one it was worth it. He never wanted to give too much of himself to that damnable chakra anyway. Nothing good could come of it.

"You never really trained after they let you into the armed forces did you?" Naruto asked as he walked over to Fortune who was bleeding through the hand clutching her wound onto the floor, "You don't rely on something like your 'luck' all of the time if you actually want to win."

Growling to herself, Fortune pulled the sidearm pistol she kept at her hip and pulled the trigger only for nothing to happen. She really never did have to really fight a battle, because the safety was still on. Naruto drew his HF Blade to slice the pistol down to an unusable nub that she dropped onto the ground as if it would have burned her.

As a last ditch she tried to pry the kunai in her chest out as a weapon but her strength faltered halfway through due to the pain and blood loss, "Are you happy?" Fortune said in a strained tone of voice, "You've killed me too."

Naruto rolled his eyes as Fortune fell down onto her side, "You know what? No, I'm not happy. Because your bullshit never mattered to me. I feel a lot of remorse about what happened to Colonel Jackson because he's a man I called a friend, not so much with you. Hell, I have more remorse about killing Chinaman and Old Boy that I have about dealing with you."

Somebody currently bleeding out on the floor thought they were way more important in the grand scheme of things than they really were.

"Are you done yet?" The mechanically warped voice came from above until the Cyborg Ninja landed on the ground right next to Naruto, sparing Fortune a glance before paying full attention to him, "You've got half of the Arsenal Tengu outside trying to cut their way through the door to take your head and they're almost through."

"Oh yeah, because I could just leave with twenty unmanned RAYs and this crazy bitch trying to kill me." Naruto rebutted as he sheathed his sword, "They shot me."

"I can see that." The ninja-fied single mother said, looking at the bullet holes in the back of his uniform, "Twenty Metal Gear RAYs?" Without a missile launcher of some sort she'd have enough trouble with taking down just one, even with the suit.

"Yeah, it's not that big of a deal." Naruto's attempts to 'humbly' downplay his accomplishment weren't received as such due to the massively smug grin on his face, "I mean they were unmanned. It's not that hard to beat a stupid computer. And it wasn't like they were all active at the same time. You can still say I'm awesome if you really want to though."

She did the exact opposite, "Kretin."

"Love you too baby."

"I forgot how much I hate you."

Fortune felt nothing but hate at the sound of seeming dismissal from Naruto Uzumaki and the meddlesome Cyborg Ninja that had been causing havoc all over Big Shell all day long. This time she was driven enough to pull the kunai the rest of the way out and throw it at the two of them, only to miss both of them without either even moving.

Naruto just stared at her as if to ask if she was done or not. The Cyborg Ninja's visor wasn't transparent but somehow she figured that she would have gotten the same expression from whoever was underneath it. He eyes slowly closed and Fortune's body collapsed the rest of the way onto the floor, not to move again.

"Right." The Cyborg Ninja said before the helmet visor moved out of the way to reveal Olga's face, "Well now that that's over with we can get down to business. Where's Raiden?"

Naruto shifted his stare, now of the more deadpan variety to Olga, "How should I know? I've been dealing with this for the last twenty minutes." He took a step back when he saw her fingers twitch to her sword, "Whoa! Okay, it was either make him leave or make him fight Fortune! Did you really want him here for _this_?" Naruto asked, gesturing around to the rampant destruction all around them in his defense, "Call him!"

"There's too much electronic interference in this room. My comm. is dead here."

"My fault. I kind of accidentally EMP'ed the hell out of this whole hangar." That sounded a lot more logical and sane in his head than when he put actual words behind it.

"…How do you accidentally-? Nevermind-." It was probably better for what was left of her composure and sanity to just let that one slide, "-…At least that explains what that surge was. Come, we need to find him." Olga's visor to her helmet went back on and she ran up a wall back into the vent into the hangar that she'd entered from.

Naruto watched her go and rolled her eyes before proceeding to follow, "Yes _dear_."

XxX

(With Raiden – Elsewhere on Arsenal Gear – Corridor to Server Room)

Raiden would have had to be blind, deaf, and dumb if he hadn't felt many of the ship's functions shut down and restart. A part of him wanted to believe that he was lucky enough for this big ocean-borne monster to have a catastrophic failure so he could put this mission to an end, but that was a wee bit too optimistic for his world view at the moment.

No. Stop being so down in the dumps. Even if you'd been lied to for the duration of your time in your spec-ops training, you couldn't stop now. Rolling over and dying now wasn't an option. Dying was for quitters.

He could hear the Codec beep going off inside of his head, but the last thing he wanted to really do was answer it right then. He wanted to focus as best he could. Focus on the mission, on anything that would keep him from thinking about the world outside. Whether he liked it or not, as screwed up as it was, this mission for all of its messiness was his bubble from having to deal with the problems that he had discovered he had with his life now.

But the masochist in him directed him to take the call, and that was the side that won out.

Hand up to his ear to receive the transmission, Raiden took a great sigh, "Yes Rose?"

"_Jack… I don't know what I can say to you right now that would possibly make you, I don't know, feel better."_

Yeah, neither did he, but since he was going down this rabbit hole he might as well see how far it went, "The truth would probably help for starters. So I'll ask you the same question I asked when this entire thing started. Why were you on this mission?"

"_The truth."_ She seemed rather hesitant to come forward with what he wanted to learn from her judging from the vastly deep breath she took, _"Okay, after all of this you deserve to know. The truth is that this all goes back further than just this mission. You remember the day we met don't you?"_

Of course he did. He'd already told her about that before.

"_It wasn't something that just happened."_ She continued, _"The truth is that I'm… well I was a spy for the Patriots. Two years ago they ordered me to keep a close watch over you and report everything I could about you to them. The best way to do that was to start a relationship with you."_

"That can't be true." Raiden said, actually stopping his procession down the long corridor to lean against a wall, "How could anyone have figured that I'd have chosen you as my… and it wasn't like you muscled your way into my life at all costs. I _let_ you in!"

"_Jack, everything you know about me is based off of what your psyche profile states would have attracted you to a woman. Everything about me; my hair and eyes, clothes, even the way I act and anything else like hobbies… it was set up to appeal to your standards all before we'd ever even met. If it hadn't been me they would have found another girl to use."_

If he hadn't felt sick to his stomach upon learning that everything about his mission had been a fabrication he actually did have to stop and dry heave at the thought of what Rosemary had just told him. That was absolutely sick. Who ordered someone to do that to another?

Two years. For two years he'd been led along in a false relationship, "All that time it was… nothing but an assignment."

"_No!"_ Rose disputed vehemently, _"At first it was, but I did fall in love with you. For real."_

"I wish I could believe that." Raiden said, getting his breathing and his cold sweat back under control. He should have listened to his gut and put this conversation off, "I wish I could believe anything happening around me anymore. All I can do now is fight. It seems like that was all I could ever do in my life, and apparently it's never been my choice."

"_Jack, what are you talking about?"_

A rather bitter smirk fixed itself upon his face as he continued on down the corridor, gun in hand, "Well I guess I was able to keep some things to myself for whatever it's worth now." He forced the transmission offline and kept going until he reached a pair of automatic doors that opened for him, letting him into the server room.

What he saw wasn't what he'd been expecting. Stereotypically, he figured that the central area of an ultra-powerful AI would be a room crowded with wires of all shapes and sizes, but compared to what he'd been imagining and what he wound up getting it wasn't that many.

There were only a few large wires leading up to the ceiling of a fairly vast room from one large pillar-like mainframe that sat on a slightly elevated position. As he entered, Raiden felt the temperature shift significantly. Something like a whole AI system had to run hot at times, so it made sense that the room would be more chilled than anywhere else. Footsteps clinking on the metal floor he slowly treaded in when he felt his Codec forcibly activated.

"_I wouldn't go any further than that Raiden."_ He heard the familiar voice of the 'Colonel' in his ear, _"This has nothing to do with your mission objective. Your objective is to eliminate Solidus Snake and end the Sons of Liberty insurrection."_

"Oh I know what my mission is _'Colonel'_." Raiden snapped as he slowly walked further inside, "Why don't you just stop acting like you haven't heard every word that's been said to me since the second this mission started. You're not on my Codec, you're in my head."

"_So you actually do believe the things that Uzumaki said to you. That man can't be trusted. He's not a part of the simulation."_

"For a computer you're not very smart." The light-haired soldier remarked, "You'd think that you wouldn't bring up something that you shouldn't even have known about, or that you would at least try not to sound like a computer when you did it."

On one of the walls, a massive virtual screen projection of what Raiden perceived the Colonel to look like appeared, ten times more than life-sized for just a head and shoulders view. The face was unemotive and dead though, as if it were really robotic.

"_You act as if you have any other option except to carry on."_ The voice boomed in real sound as well as inside of his connection via his comm.

Raiden spared the image of his own mental expectation a glance before staring straight ahead at the mainframe. He lifted his pistol and fired directly at it. The empty shell clinked off of the floor as he stared at the hole he'd shot into GW, "Shut up." He fired again, and again, and kept firing, steadily emptying the magazine until the click of an empty chamber greeted him, "SHUT UP!"

The sound of static filled his head through the Codec and filled the entire room as well, but he could still hear the Colonel's AI voice through it all, _"Raid-… Raiden. Failure… is not-. You aren't allowed to-to-to-to fail."_ It brought a smile to Raiden's face that even machines could sound like they were in pain when they were malfunctioning. Good. He was glad, _"People will die if you do, including Rose."_

Raiden stopped dead for a split second before scoffing, "Tch. Why should I care if you plan on downsizing one of your spies?"

"_I have nanomachine spec-spec-spec… readings of your body, remember?"_ The AI said in an increasingly mechanical voice, _"Your heart rate increased, your muscles tensed. You can't lie to yourself, which means you can't lie to me."_

His fists tightened as he walked in towards the bullet-ridden mainframe casing, head in a haze.

"_Complete your mission Raiden."_

"Weren't things so much easier back in the day Jack?" The conversation with a machine ended when Raiden heard the voice of Solidus Snake entering the server room, "So much simpler." He turned around abruptly and pointed his gun at the black-cloaked grey-haired man, now sporting an eyepatch from the injuries he'd received earlier in the day, "I would give you an order, an enemy to fight, someone to kill. And you would just… do it. You didn't have to think about it, about if what you were doing was wrong or evil. My perfect little killer. My Jack the Ripper."

That name. He never wanted to hear that epitaph again, but his gun was empty so a bullet wouldn't be putting a quick end to that conversation. Still though, the memories flashed through his head. Horrible ones. Of lives taken, of things he had been forced to see. And of the man that had directed him the entire time.

Yes. Solidus.

"You remember." The older man said as he could see the emotions play out on Raiden's face, "How you fought for me in Liberia. How I raised you and taught you how to kill. I made a soldier out of you."

"A soldier?" Raiden asked, body shaking in barely contained resentment, "You made a monster out of me!" He shouted, rushing Solidus with blinding speed to beat him to death with his bare hands. Every smooth martial art attack he threw was dodged by Solidus almost flowing out of the way, "I can still see faces of the people I killed! I can see the eyes of the man from when you slit his throat in front of me to prove a point!"

Solidus found the pace of Raiden's attack picking up extensively, to the extent that he felt extremely glad he was wearing an exoskeleton suit. Otherwise there would have been no chance of him keeping up with his quickness, "And you're wondering why you made such an effective PAWN!" Solidus emphasized by suddenly retaliating with a hard fist to Raiden's stomach that stopped him in his tracks, "Do you know why you were chosen? It's because unlike owning up to the past you led, you do everything you can to keep from accepting it! You deny yourself what you used to be! That kind of person is willing to accept almost anything just to forget who they are!"

"Shut up!" Raiden bellowed, shoving Solidus' fist out of his belly to deliver a backhand strike that was caught. He spun back around the other side for a back elbow with the opposite arm only to get it caught as well, "It's because of you that this is all happening!"

"If I hadn't chosen you I would have picked someone else to be my Jack the Ripper." Solidus said before delivering a headbutt to the back of Raiden's head to knock him forward and to the floor, "But you. You lapped up every little bit of your 'life' that they handfed you. Did you know… you don't appear in any databases despite being in the military for years? Your entire military career was done solo. You were basically isolated until the Patriots paraded that little spy strumpet in front of you, and look how tightly you latched on. Face reality!"

The telltale sign of a click let him know that Raiden had reloaded his gun, but when the young soldier turned from his stomach and fired at Solidus he hit nothing but the cloak that he left behind in the air, 'What the hell?' There was a burning trail on the ground presumably in the direction that Solidus had moved in, 'Even in a suit, he shouldn't be able to do that.'

"How tame." Solidus said from behind him across the room. His armored suit was appropriately bulky for his seemingly muscular frame, dark in color with a pair of mechanical tentacles extending back behind his shoulders, "A gun. You used to be so much better with a blade, but I guess you're trying to suppress that as well. What a way to show respect to the man that raised you. But at least you're remembering the way you used to kill. Or is this just the end result of what the Patriots wanted out of their S3 Plan for you?"

Raiden just held his teeth in a grit, his gun shaking in his grasp as he tried to keep his aim on Solidus, "I've got no clue what you're talking about!"

"Tell me, with all of those simulations that you've run, what does this remind you of Jack? A mission in a single facility, where things progressively keep getting worse and worse. Complete with nuclear weapons, dead VIPs, an elite unit gone rogue, and a Cyborg Ninja." The last part Solidus deadpanned to make it completely obvious what he was talking about.

He didn't need to though, because this was all seeming to run parallel in too many areas to that of the Shadow Moses Incident. So what exactly did that mean?

"Heh-heh…" Solidus spared the virtual screen by the wall a glance before turning his attention back to the boy he'd 'raised', "I'd say they've done an admirable job of trying to turn you into the next Solid Snake."

XxX

(With Snake – Exterior of Arsenal Gear)

Ever investigative, Snake made his way onto the topside of the vast seafaring craft that was Arsenal Gear. Getting that little bit of help from Meryl to get deep inside of Arsenal Gear really paid off. Even with the weirdness that was a brand new ultimate warship seemingly crapping out in regards to its power supply even for a few moments.

"How are the hostages Otacon?" Snake asked quietly as he finished climbing the ladder to the surface, speaking over his Codec to keep a status report on things that he couldn't affect directly himself.

"_Well, it was a little hairy for a while, but we got them all away from what was left of Big Shell just before all of the supports broke and it went under. We landed in Manhattan and let them off… called the correct authorities before we left. We couldn't really stay around there, what with half of the four of us between Wolf, Catherine, Emma, and I being terrorists technically."_

"Yeah I guess-, wait, 'Wolf' as in Sniper Wolf?"

"_Ehehe… yeah."_

"…No lover-boy bullshit while we're still in the thick of it. Eyes on the prize until this is over."

"_Yeah, yeah I know. By the way, Catherine lost contact with Naruto for several minutes while he was fighting Fortune. Something knocked her connection to him out and she had to work double-time with Emma to get it back."_

"He fought Fortune? Did he win?"

"_Catherine restarted the connection, but Naruto hasn't reopened it from his side since it went down. I couldn't tell you yet. I'll keep you posted."_

Good. As he pulled himself the rest of the way up onto the surface of the ship, Snake looked around with a pronounced frown on his face. The very platform he stood on seemed virtual or something from the way it seemed to be lighting up just from his being there. He would rather look up at the good old-fashioned night sky honestly. All of that glowing beneath him would give him a headache.

It didn't leave him with a necessarily secure feeling, but that might have been just because he could see another glow elsewhere, not too far away on the surface of Arsenal Gear.

As he slowly walked in that direction, M4 held safely just in case it needed to be aimed and fired at a moment's notice, but he wasn't sneaking up on anyone.

"Good to see you again in the flesh Snake." Even from behind, the slicked back grey hair and the weathered duster couldn't have possibly belonged to anyone else in the world outside of Revolver Ocelot, "This Metal Gear is quite the sight isn't it? A gigantic floating coffin if I had to judge it."

"Now why would you say that about something that you went through all of this trouble to steal?" Snake asked, stopping at what he felt was a safe distance once Ocelot turned to face him, "Most thieves don't really complain about the things that they take." Of course, he had figured as well that Arsenal had many tactical disadvantages to it.

"Oh it's a good idea in theory." Ocelot said, pacing about as if he didn't have an assault rifle pointed at him, "An elite detachment of highly trained troops in powered suits, all of the cameras inside for necessary security, thousands and thousands of missiles some even of a nuclear warhead variety, a purified hydrogen bomb, and let's not forget the 25 unmanned RAYs in the hangar. But missing even one of these things to help defend the vessel, it's a gigantic moving target."

So what was the point of taking the damn thing? Ocelot seemed to be treating it like it was a disposable piece of a board game, after all the trouble they'd gone through to get it.

"What happens now?" Snake asked rhetorically, "Is the end game really to launch a nuke over Manhattan and shut everything down? That really doesn't seem very farsighted to me, and from the sounds of what you think of Arsenal Gear I don't think someone like you would have a lot of faith in risking their wellbeing for a plan like that."

"That's the thing about you Snake; always just too damn perceptive. But then again, it's always easier for someone on the outside looking in. You get to see more of the big picture."

"What big picture?"

"Now what fun is the game if I give you all of the answers eh?"

"This isn't a game! This is real life! What's the point of it all? Talk! Now!"

Ocelot didn't answer at first, instead his right arm seemed to twitch and begin acting according to its own will despite himself. Ocelot began to convulse and clutched at his head with his left hand, "But dear brother… we've only just begun."

Snake went wide-eyed before the accent actually registered with him, as well as referring to him as 'brother'. And apparently he was possessing Ocelot's body again even after death, "You just don't know how to stay dead and buried, do you Liquid?"

"Why would I need to stay buried?" The Liquid Snake-possessed Ocelot said, not caring a tad that Snake's rifle was trained on him as he slowly walked around, "There's plenty of room for me to walk around and stretch out in Ocelot's body. I couldn't have found a better tool to use against the Patriots than their own wretched spy with his head full of their secrets. Thank you for coming. Without you I never would have gotten the chance to take him over again."

Like hell.

Snake began opening fire, but somehow nothing he fired made contact with his target. Bullets were veering around him as if he were Fortune. Liquid rolled Ocelot's his eyes at the constant gunfire before pulling one of Ocelot's revolvers and firing once at Snake, hitting him in the shoulder when he moved his body to try and avoid it,

"Gah!" The grizzled soldier dropped his rifle and moved to pick it back up but Liquid fired at the weapon itself to coax Snake away from it, "How are you doing that?"

Liquid chuckled and spun the revolver around on his finger in a very Ocelot-like manner before trying to holster it, winding up with the gun going in backwards. Tch, Ocelot probably practiced doing that for a while until he got it right, "Would you believe me if I said I'm psychic?" A growl from Snake told him no, and Liquid gestured to a small device he had attached to his bullet-holding belt, "Thought not. It's an electromagnetic field generator. Fortune has one too hidden on her person… or had one. FOXHOUND's former little probie overcame that little advantage."

"Why hidden?" Snake asked, trying to work his way through the wound in his shoulder. He'd had worse, but he had to figure out his full range of motion with a revolver round in his arm, and from what he was hearing, Naruto managed to win against Fortune, "Wouldn't letting her know about it make her a better fighter?"

"The foolish bitch was damn near suicidal." Liquid said with a chuckle, "It was as if she thought her own life were some pathetic Shakespearean tragedy with her at the center of it. She was too useful to them with all of her angst-guided anger, so they made her think she was fortunate in battle with some sort of supernatural ability. With the rail gun she used no one ever got close enough on the battlefield to test just how true that was."

So the Patriots had been using her too. That was what Liquid was basically saying. And with her probably came the rest of Dead Cell, as she was their leader coming into all of this today.

What did that make them? Just bodies there to serve as obstacles for some kind of purpose? A test? What exactly?

And on another subject… "What does that make Solidus? What is all of this? You're telling me that the Patriots orchestrated all of this!? That's impossible! There are way too many moving parts to take into account in order to make that work!"

"Oh they couldn't account for everything, such as you and the boy showing up. But for everything else, it was all a part of their S3 Plan." Liquid said, finding it amusing to lord this sort of information over Snake's head. Some things never changed, and before Naruto killed him he always enjoyed being the one that held the cards, "This body really _is_ useful. Such an abundance of knowledge."

"S3?"

"Three words: Solid. Snake. Simulation. A system capable of potentially equipping every soldier with combat abilities comparable to Solid Snake." Liquid said, taking pleasure in seeing the look of shock on Snake's face before he waved his hands to downplay it and started laughing, "That's what Ocelot told Solidus at least. It played into his paranoia of his thinking that the Patriots think of him as more than what he is, and that's a pawn. He was always a pawn. A means to an end for what the S3 Plan was _really_ meant to entail."

"Well don't you just have all of the answers?" Snake said, pondering the merits of straight-up charging Liquid to try and fight him hand-to-hand. He couldn't shoot him or blow him up as long as he had that damn electromagnetic field device, so he had to try something, "Having fun talking about all of this?"

"Oh you have no idea." Liquid said with a grin on Ocelot's face, "It was almost worth dying for."

"Really? I'm sure Naruto'd be happy to give you a repeat of the first time if I don't get you first."

"Temper, temper brother." Unfettered by Snake's attempt to taunt and threaten him simultaneously, Liquid continued, "S3 really stands for Selection for Societal Sanity. Everything that has happened today, all of it, was just a test through the AI GW. For the last two years, the Patriots have been trying to prove that they can manipulate entire world events instead of just reacting to them. With the information they've garnered over the last two years coming to a head with tonight's exercise, they've done just that."

That was just… so callous. All of the people that died today. All of the lives ruined and all of the money wasted over the last two years since the sinking of the tanker in the harbor. Just for a single test? Just to prove that they could make anything happen on whatever scale they wished?

Artificially manufacturing world-shaping events and situations was beyond the scope of terrifying. Just imagining any group of people with that sort of control of the world was enough to make you sick at the thought of it.

Even Liquid, ever manipulative and despicable bastard he was, seemed entirely disgusted by this. It seemed so grossly inhuman. Who could think of such a thing?

"Whether or not Solidus wins or loses here, they've gotten most of what they've really wanted out of all of this." Liquid said, "The only thing that's really left is the final exercise. Operative Raiden still has to kill Solidus."

At this point, Snake's malice against Liquid was lost in exchange for wanting to understand, "You've got to explain it a bit more for us that don't specialize in psychology."

"Raiden is supposed to represent the general population. Told only what the Patriots felt he needed to know in order to guide him to do what they wanted without blackmail, extortion, or any kind of threat, without putting the mystery of their existence at risk."

"But why Raiden in particular?"

"Because he's already skilled, and because he's the ideal of what they want to manipulate. This would never have worked on one of us, or that brat Naruto, or on anyone that already was aware of them to an extent. It wasn't meant to." Liquid almost seemed to pity the young man at the center of this entire plot in that regard, "This is just the first step to controlling the masses on a civilian level all over the world. I know you can see the potential applications of this."

Feeding the anticipations and expectations of the masses but filtering, deleting, and replacing certain information.

Snake didn't want to look at how such a thing could be applied. There was only one complete way that he could see taking form with the methods that the Patriots believed in. This was about controlling the world one way or another.

As far as Liquid was concerned, it didn't matter to him. He had Ocelot's brain and all of the information that the Patriots had given him along with it, thus he was going to go and put it to immediate use.

"I'll be seeing you brother." Liquid said, smirking in Ocelot's body, "I'm off to go and put bullets into each of the heads of the Patriots' Wiseman Committee. But let me leave you with a bit of a wonderful parting." Clicking a button on his person, Liquid laughed when he saw Snake's face pale at the sound of a familiar mechanical roar.

Snake had to run and dive out of the way as the crushing metal bulk of a Metal Gear Ray flew through the air from an opening in Arsenal Gear and landed on the surface, attempting to crush him before opening its mouth and roaring threateningly at him.

Liquid took the chance to jump straight onto the head of the mammoth machine before gesturing tauntingly at Snake, "Yes, Naruto's little EMP bomb might have killed the rest of the unmanned RAYs, but Ocelot kept the original from the Tanker Incident for himself. Call it nostalgia or whatever you'd like."

Snake called it annoying.

With no Stinger missiles on his person or even an RPG he was going to have an extensive amount of trouble tonight.

Snake didn't flinch in the face of the roar or the subtle threat, instead putting a cigarette into his mouth and bending the end to light it as was done with the brand he used. Liquid hopped into the cockpit of the RAY model and took the controls, intending to eradicate Snake then and there, _"That's a very disgusting habit to keep brother. Those things'll kill you don't you know?"_

"Yeah, that'd be a real shame wouldn't it?" Snake deadpanned as he walked over and picked his assault rifle up off of the ground. Liquid wasn't going to kill him until he had his full attention, this he knew. The man always had something of a flair for the dramatic, no matter how pragmatic he believed he was.

He loved the attention, so Snake was going to milk that for everything he had.

Thus he made a show of checking over his rifle as if he were picking it up and inspecting it for the first time until a second deafening roar came from RAY. Snake just looked between the aquatic Metal Gear and his gun before tossing the gun aside, 'I might as well shoot at this damn thing with my finger.' He thought to himself before doing exactly that to continue picking on Liquid, "Bang."

The last thing he actually expected was for a rocket to impact off of the right shoulder of RAY with a blast. But lo and behold, that was what occurred.

He definitely wasn't complaining though.

"Hah!" Johnny cheered, throwing his rocket launcher away in victory before running over to yell down the ladder hatch that had gotten him there, "Who says I can't use dangerous equipment just as good as anyone else? You should have seen that shot Meryl!"

"You killed it?" Meryl asked in astonishment, voice echoing up from where she'd been climbing, "Wow… way to go Johnny."

"Uh…" Turning back around, the commonly-clad young soldier noted that while he'd stunned RAY greatly he hadn't really finished the job, "…I didn't exactly kill it."

Someone couldn't possibly be that incompetent. Meryl was certain that Johnny couldn't have been. She'd seen him fight when he was dialed in, he wasn't nearly as bad as he seemed to be 90% of the time, "Then why'd you throw the weapon down?" The redhead shouted at him, "Reload and shoot it again! You've got more rockets!"

By now, Snake had taken the time to run as far away from RAY as he could with the opening presented to him. More accurately, he was trying to reach the rocket launcher that Johnny Sasaki had foolishly cast away after landing only one shot.

Inside of RAY, Liquid had recovered, and was extremely pissed off. Lowering the monster machine's head, he had it go on a full out charge straight at the lone Gurlukovich Mercenary grunt stupid enough to shoot at him, _"You've lived for far longer than a useless dullard like you should have survived for! I'm doing the world a favor by getting rid of you, you pollutant to the gene pool!"_

"AAAAHH!" Johnny yelled at seeing RAY rapidly stomp its way toward him, "Where's my RPG? Where's my RPG?" Unfortunately his nerves forced his stomach to act up in its usual timely manner, "Ohhhh…"

"Johnny!" Snake yelled at him as he was nearing the discarded weapon, "Throw a rocket over here!"

"What?"

"Throw it or get run over!"

From the bag on his back, Johnny grabbed a bit of RPG ammunition and threw it overhand as far as he could to Snake. The volatile ammunition bounced off of the ground, but Snake was able to cradle it in time to slide down right next to the RPG, reloading it in one fluid move as he twisted over to his belly to fire from the prone position.

With a pull of the trigger, the projectile rocketed out and flew off to again impact off of the right leg of RAY this time. He couldn't take aim at the head from the angle that he had, so he did the next best thing that would save Johnny.

RAY did a head-over-heels roll after the shot hit it in the base of the foot and disrupted its balance that had been positioned too far forward to be stable for its charge. There was still the matter of Johnny being way too close for safety as the out of control RAY careened across the surface of Arsenal Gear in a heap, but it was nothing that a Tengu suit-clad Meryl couldn't handle as she had by now climbed her way out of the ladder hatch.

With the enhanced physical properties given to her by the suit, she managed to tackle Johnny far out of the way of RAY's path of unintended destruction

Snake lowered the RPG from its aimed position and pushed himself up to stand with a grunt, "It's been a blast catching up again Liquid." He said as he reached his feet and started to jog his way over to Meryl and Johnny, "What the hell are you two doing here?"

"Snake!" Meryl said upon getting back up from protecting Johnny, who was rolling around on the ground clutching his churning stomach. The poor bastard, "Arsenal's course has been altered!"

"To where exactly?"

"Manhattan!"

"…Wasn't that where Solidus was going anyway? To launch the nuke?"

"No, we were going to get as far away as we could to launch so that when the EMP went off it wouldn't affect the ship." And even if that hadn't been the case…, "The new coordinates would put us in the middle of Manhattan Island."

This Metal Gear wasn't designed to have legs was it? Because if not, that really wasn't going to work out well for any of the parties involved, either on the ship or on land.

Liquid's taunting laughter echoed through the amplifying system of RAY as he had managed to maneuver the Metal Gear back onto its feet, _"Aren't I such a giving man? Rerouting Arsenal Gear's coordinates to a place for you all to land? There's no need to thank me!" _ On RAY's fin arms, pods opened up and launched missiles into the air.

"Move!" Snake yelled, prompting him and his comrades to run as fast as they could to outpace the targeting of the missiles as they fell from the sky. As the blasts of the missed missiles rang out in the open air, Liquid's laughs could be heard as he made for the edge of Arsenal Gear to reach the ocean, "Liquid!"

One missed missile landed close enough to the retreating Snake, Meryl, and Johnny to blow the three of them away with resounding force.

The durability provided to Meryl given her Tengu suit protected her from the dangerous concussive portion of the blast, and Johnny had to shed the top of his BDUs due to it catching on fire. Snake pushed himself off of the ground, his cigarette mostly ash at this point as he spit it out of his mouth angrily.

His body hurt, and his pride hurt again. Even after he'd been killed in an exceedingly brutal manner five years ago he was still able to possess Ocelot's body through his right arm. Why Ocelot would have chosen Liquid's arm as a replacement instead of a cybernetic prosthetic was a mystery, but one thing still wasn't.

Liquid was still ultra-dangerous… and he was still a dick.

"This just keeps getting better and better." Snake said as he tapped into his Codec to contact his distance support, "Otacon."

XxX

(With Naruto – Elsewhere in Arsenal Gear)

"You want me to what?" Naruto asked belligerently over his reestablished distance connection with Catherine, "Kitten, this really isn't the time to give me even more stuff to do." The call had brought his and Olga's search for Raiden to a dead halt en route to the server room.

"_I wouldn't be telling you to do it if it wasn't super-important aniki. Arsenal Gear is gonna hit Manhattan!"_

With the open transmission he'd kept with Olga to keep from having to repeat everything he heard, both of them caught that and looked at each other in shock, "…Who the fuck's supposed to be driving this thing?" He asked without mincing words.

"No one drives. I'm sure you knew that already." Olga replied, "There isn't even a bridge. All of this is controlled through the server room. That's the heart of Arsenal." She noticed him giving her an irritated look and merely crossed her arms over her chest, "Don't look at me. This ship isn't my design. I just took part in stealing it."

Needless to say, she shared in his annoyance of this not being an easy fix.

"_She's right."_ Instead of Catherine's voice, Emma's came through, _"Arsenal wasn't intended to be commanded by humans, just manned by a few for security's sake. The entire thing is meant to be driven according to the will of GW. But between the worm cluster and… something else, its security was weak enough to be manipulated. Maybe… if you can get back we can do it again."_

There was a problem with that however. Even though comparatively Naruto was light-years ahead of Snake when it came to computer know-how, it wasn't like he was astute by any stretch of the imagination. The only reason he knew half of what he knew was because he had to for some of the crap the Patriots made him do back when he was doing their wetwork.

"I can barely make a website." Naruto said, "And you think I'm going to understand any of your computer genius instructions to stop this Death Star from hitting Manhattan and killing a shit ton of people? How about you Olga?" Maybe she was better with the tech crap than he was?

Sadly, no. She covered her face with the Cyborg Ninja visor to hide her touch of embarrassment as she mumbled her answer, "…Can't even create website."

"Wonderful." Naruto continued, throwing his hands into the air, "I hope you guys aren't anywhere near the shoreline because I'm pretty sure this thing's gonna take out a good chunk of the south side."

"_Your sister's listening and so is Hal."_ Emma said with a bit of exasperation,_ "If anyone can dumb it down enough for you to understand it I'm pretty sure one of them can. Just get to GW and we'll walk you through it from there."_

Once again, Naruto looked Olga's way, but this time in an expectant manner for directions, "…We were already on the way there. It's the only logical place that Raiden would have fled to if he had even the slightest idea of where things were on this ship. I think he took earlier Uzumaki's suggestion to finish your worm cluster's job with bullets and explosions seriously."

Naruto paled and looked over at the female Cyborg Ninja carefully, "…You don't think-."

Olga just showed her face from behind the visor to show the dreading expression on her face, "When you're desperate…"

"_Don't let him destroy the mainframe! If you do there's no way to interact with GW and you won't be able to avert course! Hal's trying to call him but he's not picking up!"_

Naruto decided to kick his own ass later for suggesting something like that to someone that was obviously having trouble keeping his wits about him, "I was just messing with him when I said that! It was so tense I had to say something!"

"If he's not picking up he may be dead!" A panic unlike any she'd felt since her daughter was originally taken gripped Olga's heart enough that if she hadn't been in the powered Cyborg Ninja garb her knees probably would have buckled.

Naruto grabbed her shoulders and shook her one hard, brain-rattling time to get his point across, "He's not dead!" He shouted right in her face. He wasn't about to have the strongest woman he knew break down after all of this. Not now, "It's not like he's a weakling! Don't say that! Now which way?"

The white-haired Russian femme shook it off and bid herself to thank Naruto for that later if things shook out decently enough for them. For now though she wasn't going to show another shred of vulnerability no matter what, "Follow me. We're not far, and the Tengu are probably on lockdown at this point."

'That's my girl.' Naruto thought to himself as he took off after the rapidly running woman. She had a purpose behind those blurrily quick steps and as she was now he'd probably follow her straight into the maw of hell if he had to.

For now however, the server room would do.

* * *

><p><strong>So after the meme-tastic experience that was Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance ("Nanomachines son." You fucking knew that shit was gonna get spread when you first heard it), I need to start amassing funds to pay for a Playstation 4 by holiday time so that I can experience the next generation of brain-rotting video games.<strong>

**This is a long way from Super Nintendo and Super Mario World ain't it?**

**But seriously, Metal Gear Rising's dialogue is just a series of punctuated one-liners followed by extreme un-imitatable violence. You can't take it seriously, but damn it you feel good playing it when you're good.**

**Anyway, I've got to get out of here. Later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	30. No Way Out of the Rabbit Hole

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. A free-roaming Metal Gear game Konami? Impossible says I!

…And I eagerly await to be proven wrong on that front.

**Chapter 30: No Way Out of the Rabbit Hole**

* * *

><p>Raiden was beside himself. Things had been absurd all day long, and as the day was almost bleeding far past midnight and into the early morning he once again found himself in a situation that he wouldn't have imagined he had waiting for him when he woke up that morning.<p>

How could you anticipate coming across the man that ages ago had killed your parents, abducted you, and turned you into an adolescent killing machine? Let alone finding that the man had wound up becoming the President of the United States of America for a term and was now the leader of the terrorist organization set to try and bring the country's electronic and economic infrastructure to its knees.

Oh, and the fact that he was getting his ass handed to him on a silver platter wasn't helping either.

By now Raiden realized that his pistol was doing him no good in this fight, but out of sheer force of habit, when Solidus wasn't running blurry, burning circles around him and he could actually see him, Raiden had to shoot at him.

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

Being fired upon after ceasing his speedy movement, Solidus drew a katana and a wakizashi pair of HF Blades and blocked the bullets sent his way effortlessly, "You've lost your edge 'Jack the Ripper'." Raiden growled audibly at the bringing up of his nickname, but it did no good, "You've forgotten what it means to get up close and personal for your kill."

Inhumanly fast as he was, Solidus closed the distance quickly and let loose a cross-slash at his prodigal son. Raiden avoided the attack, but suffered the loss of his handgun as the swords cut right through it. Gritting his teeth, he dropped the weapon and braced himself as one of the tentacles of Solidus' suit lashed out and swatted him across the server room.

He hit the floor and bounced off of the wall, head swimming from the impact.

"Ugh," Raiden grunted as he started getting back up, "…It's over. You know there's no way you're going to get away with this. Even if you let off the EMP and take everything down, then what?"

"Ocelot has contingency plans," Solidus declared, "We were going to use Fortune and Dead Cell as decoys to take this ship in our stead and attract the heat while I waited for the Patriots to show themselves to restore order, but since they're all dead now I'll simply have to deal with the fallout in the aftermath. It's nothing I wasn't prepared for anyway. You actually showed up as one. With the Patriots sticking their backup data inside of your head, I can simply kill you and take it to locate them."

"Dead Cell, and the Gurlukovich Mercenaries were just supposed to be decoys…" Raiden parroted to himself as the gravity of everything he'd been told began sinking in. This entire time, all of this had been orchestrated to be akin to Shadow Moses, but Solidus didn't plan on losing. So what happened if he was defeated?

Yeah. If he just so happened to give up the ghost and let Solidus finish him off that would stick the screws to those sons of bitches. He still had his free will! He still had the power to make his own choices, even if those choices were to live as a pawn or to die as a free man!

His Codec began to act up and activate without his prompting, causing a distorted computerized-sounding version of the Colonel's voice to go through his head. The bugs that had been there before were nonexistent now, _"If you lose, and if the S3 Plan is deemed a failure due to your rogue actions, we will have to take measures to… clean up after you. You've been told before but it bears repeating. I'm sure that Rosemary wouldn't be a fan of that sort of measure."_

…Of course. She was a member of his support team, so of course she'd have been in a place where they could keep her just in case. What did it matter though? Everything he felt for her had been forced by another. If she even really loved him, what did it matter? It was all artificial.

"_You can say that she's just a spy to you now Raiden, but you can't lie to us. We're inside of your head. We know full well that you do love her."_ The AI continued to drone obnoxiously inside of his head, as if it had all of the answers, _"For once in your life see something through to the end. For once live up to the responsibilities you've accepted. Kill Solidus. Complete your mission. Serve your country."_

"I'm conflicted Jack," Solidus admitted, "I so desperately want the old Jack to come back out. My ripper. But if you kill me you'll simply be their dog doing it on their command. Disgusting. The only thing I can do for you is kill you as you are and remember you as you were. Unfettered, unstoppable. The perfect little machine of destruction."

"You're so stupid…" Raiden eventually said as he stood back up, head lowered to conceal his face beneath his drooping hair.

Hearing his 'creation' speak in such a biting, acerbic manner, especially when he'd clearly been shown to be outclassed, it grated Solidus greatly, "Excuse me Jack? I don't think I got that."

"You made me, right?" Raiden asked, a manic grin slowly spreading across his lips, the rest of his face shaded, "I was your best right? So what the fuck did you think they were going to do with me after you lost me? You're so smart, right? You're the one with the answers that can change the world, _right_!? Then is it really that much of a surprise that I'm the one they used against you? That I'm the one that's here to kill you? Personally, I think it's FUCKING HILARIOUS!"

It was official. Raiden was finally cracking under the pressure of it all. The entire day's events. The end of the world as it was known looming over his head, his own mortality, his feelings from the old days in battle welling back up, reuniting with his old tormentor that had turned him into the most effective child soldier of the Liberian Civil War, learning that his entire life had been manipulated from the beginning as a test subject meant to represent the American public at large.

He broke.

He had no method to cope with it all.

The only thing he knew for sure was that dealing with Solidus would solve one of his problems, and it was the problem that was the closest to his reach.

The solution was to kill.

And when it came to killing Raiden might have been good, but Jack was better.

Jack was the best.

Solidus could have his powered suit. All Jack the Ripper needed was a blade or something sharp in his hand, and that was all he needed to tear his foe apart. Now he just needed to take one, and he had his eye on a pretty sweet one in particular.

Without a moment's hesitation, Raiden rushed like a bull straight at Solidus, actually surprising the ex-President at his enemy's course of action. He quickly recovered and sent his suit's two tentacles out to impale or batter Raiden into a pulp.

In an absurd show of dexterity, Raiden spotted an opening between the approaching business ends of the two suit weapons and dove like a missile straight through them, barreling right into Solidus' body, tackling him to the ground. Solidus grunted as the air was driven out of his lungs, but when his back hit the ground he used the momentum of the fall to immediately kick his former charge away over his head.

Raiden managed to put his hand on the ground and spring through the move, while Solidus instantly stood back up, cursing himself at allowing himself to be surprised by that berserker's charge. He was then surprised by something else when he realized that he had been relieved of one of his HF Blades, "Impossible."

"Jack the Ripper…" Raiden said, holding up the katana from Solidus' katana/wakizashi duo that he'd taken during his tackle. It had been the sole intent of his attack; to steal one of those beautiful swords, "You know, I can act like I'm disgusted by how I got that nickname, but it's kind of appropriate. I did always like blade work after all."

"Just like I taught you."

"Yeah, let me thank you for that."

Heightened aggression and violent battle style or not, Solidus was still suited up, which meant he was faster and had better reflexes than Raiden. The young man's swift blade rush was met with nothing but a flaming trail on the ground marking the path of Solidus.

'Not good enough Jack!' Solidus thought, wide-eyed with battle lust as he felt his soldier's high flaring up. This was going to be the kind of fight it was in his DNA to enjoy. He just knew it. And then he realized that he'd missed something in the middle of his turning around to face Raiden.

Raiden hadn't stopped to think of his next move or to marvel at Solidus' speed for a moment. He kept moving and wound up getting behind his former superior. Only a quick move saved Solidus, but he still lost a tentacle to Raiden's speedy slash.

He cut through it as if it weren't even there.

Solidus' suit had to cover for the loss of stability the lost tentacle caused his overall balance. This led to Raiden continuing his assault without surcease. His follow up attack was blocked by Solidus's wakizashi, and using his one remaining tentacle to brace himself on the ground from behind he overpowered Raiden, pushing him back against the computer tower that served as the housing case for the GW server.

Solidus smirked as he raised his tentacle and prepared to stab Raiden from the side with it, until he found his eyepatch moved from its proper place to cover his actual good eye and blind him. He then let out a guttural grunt of pain as he felt himself be run through by a sword, "Gack! Jack!"

"Shhh…" Raiden said, grinning as he saw the blood spill through the hole he'd created in Solidus' armor, "You wanted the old Jack back right? Well this is him. Or did you want the Jack that was scared of you and would listen to anything you said? Sorry. That Jack is dead, just like you're going to be."

He finished his statement before feeling the tentacle of Solidus grab him by his throat and lift him off of the ground. The lifting motion slowly pulled the sword free from the wound it had caused and gave Solidus the chance to move his eyepatch back to the correct eye before hurling Raiden across the room, forcing his body to smash off of the cold metal wall hard enough to dent it, "Hah… hah… not enough yet."

"You're really showing your age old man," Raiden taunted as he got back up slowly, bleeding from a contusion on his head, "Maybe you should have a lie down."

"I'm only 37 you brat."

"Wow. You look awful."

"You can't stop me Jack. I will be remembered," Solidus said, dabbing his own blood with his hand before forming a resolute fist, "I want my memory, my existence to remain. Unlike an intron of history... I will be remembered as an exon. That will be my legacy, my mark in history. But the Patriots would deny us even that. I will triumph over the Patriots and liberate us all!"

At that moment a Solar Gun shot flew through the suddenly open door of the server room, impacting off of Solidus' tentacle that he tried to block it with. Raiden's eyes shone at the opportunity presented and he rushed forward to unleash a devastating, streaking cut through the blind side of Solidus' body.

The cut was deep enough to sever his spine, even if it didn't bifurcate him.

Naruto and Olga entered to see his mouth open in a silent gasp of pain and disbelief before his legs gave out entirely and he collapsed bonelessly to the floor.

"Now that…" Raiden said, breathing heavily following his bloody dispatching of Solidus Snake, "…That's what I'm talking about."

Both the paramilitary ninja and the Russian femme stared in interest before Naruto smacked his lips and made a remark, "Well… that's the second 'Snake' that I saw die from a really nasty sword kill. Now I don't know if that's just a theme for me, or if it means anything for _our_ Snake but uh… knock on wood just in case?"

Olga stared at the blood pooling freely around Solidus' body on the floor and let out a sigh of respite, "…Mission accomplished you bastards," She said quietly in honest relief.

Raiden's breathing slowed down over time, and his eyes seemed to calm in time for him to realize just how much blood was covering him. He'd butchered a man for the Patriots. He'd done what they wanted. He was their pawn, just as they'd wanted him to be.

Walking to sit against the computer tower, he threw his sword to the floor and slid to the ground on his backside, running a bloody hand through his light-colored hair, "Well… we won," He said in a hollow voice.

"_Not to rain on the parade or anything, but Aniki get to the damn server and jack in!"_

"What?"

"_In your wrist guard! A little cord! Find it, pull it out, plug it into the server!"_ Catherine said, dumbing it down as much as she possibly could for the semi-luddite Naruto.

Cursing inwardly, Naruto did as requested and quickly found the appropriate dock to plug into. Thank God he had a high tech friend and a high tech little sister or they'd never be able to do anything, "Now what?"

"_I'm hacking into the ship's controls… now! Use the pad on the underside and turn it!"_

"Which way?"

"_Your left!"_

Naruto dragged his fingertip across the bottom of his opposite wrist as fast as he could and everyone felt the ship sharply jerk to the side, knocking Olga to the ground and Raiden over from his seated position.

Once the rumbling of the turning Arsenal Gear ceased and the frantic chattering of instructions from Catherine Miller ceased, Naruto gave it a good ten seconds before dropping to his knees and setting his forehead against the computer tower, "…Saved the world a-fucking-gain… and I don't think anybody I cared about even died this time. Why am I not happy?"

Because they didn't save their world. They saved the Patriots' world.

The fight hadn't been one that any of the victors had actually believed in, it had been a fight of absolute necessity, for whatever reason they were required to do so. None of them had been there because they believed that Solidus had been entirely wrong.

As far as Philanthropy was concerned, he was right in regards to his final goal of getting to the Patriots, but so wrong about his approach and the actions he'd planned on taking to get to them that there was no way he could be allowed to go through with it.

That left them all feeling quite hollow. There wasn't even the feeling of a job well done, because all of them had done things they had to numb themselves to.

Olga had to fool her soldiers in the Gurlukovich Mercenaries and fight alongside men that hurt them and killed them in Snake and Raiden.

Naruto had killed people that he'd lived and fought alongside in Dead Cell, along with the wife of a man that he'd considered a friend and a respected commanding officer.

…Raiden just felt used.

The endorphins of achieving victory didn't run through Naruto's head for a moment. Raiden was coming to terms over the man that he had been shaped to be his entire life, that no single choice he'd made in twenty-plus years had been his own. Olga might have concluded the mission to protect her daughter, but after the initial relief, she was still clearly apprehensive and somewhat terrified.

Maybe because in the aftermath of it all she'd never been assured of anything else, other than the fact that her baby would live if she did what she was told.

So now what?

This was what it felt like after Shadow Moses, only then there hadn't been such a sense of urgency. They didn't have a next move necessarily planned, but they all needed one.

"Hey," Naruto eventually said to Raiden, making sure he had the man's attention before tilting his head upward, "So are you getting a ride back to shore?"

"What's the point?"

"Well you have a girlfriend don't you?"

Raiden scoffed and stood back up off of the ground, "It wasn't real. The Patriots created her just so I'd fall for her and they could keep tabs on me, to make sure I was coming up the way they wanted me to. She said that it was real for her, but for a relationship like that it's always going to hang overhead. It's not worth it."

Naruto frowned at Raiden's admission before trying to think of something to say, "…Well if you're that broken up about it, it was real to you, even if someone else did set you up. It doesn't really matter for something like that if it was put together, if it's something you want I'd still go for it. After everything that just happened, stop worrying about doing the opposite of what someone wants you to. Sometimes if you want to be happy you've got to let some things slide."

"I'm supposed to let this slide?"

Naruto grinned and mentally connected to Raiden via Codec, _"I'm in love with a woman two years older than me who almost killed me twice without saying she was sorry. She's got her own private army that hates my guts, and she's got a kid that isn't mine. Like I said, you've got to let some things slide if you want to take a shot at what you want, especially if it's a girl."_

"_It's not that easy… is it?"_

"_Hell no it's not easy. I mean, you've only got one person to convince that loving her is worth the other stuff, but that person knows better because that person is you. You can't fool yourself, but you can convince yourself of damn near anything. Just look at Solidus."_

Well, not now because he kind of had his spine severed, but Naruto meant to look more at his ambition. Until the very end he believed he would be the one to change it all with a river of blood, subterfuge, and outright terrorism.

Everything that he'd tried on this day had been in the workings for years. He'd waited and amassed his forces for the last several years to take his chance, and he was convinced the entire way that he was the one that could pull it all off. He never doubted himself for a moment until the bitter end.

"_If he could convince himself that he could do all of that, you can convince yourself that you can be with a woman that you know you love. I'm just saying."_ Naruto communicated to Raiden with a shrug,_ "At least you've got her already. I've still got to convince mine that we could work out without killing each other."_

There were certain people you didn't expect to learn things from. There was no offense intended, but Raiden never expected to get a lesson of the heart from someone like Naruto. That was mostly due to how they'd interacted throughout the day.

Having spoken his opinion to Raiden, Naruto switched his Codec out of Codec-to-Codec mental conversation and tried to contact his support team, "So what's it look like on getting us outta here Kitten?"

"_Arsenal is out of Sons of Liberty control Aniki. It's only a matter of time until the U.S. Military finally gets the all-clear to move in and take it over. When that happens…"_

When that happened, they'd kill everyone on-board. It would be a rough battle against the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, especially with the suited members of the Arsenal Tengu there to fight as well, but it was going to get nasty regardless.

Moving over to Olga, Naruto reached out to her and set a hand on her shoulder to make sure she knew he wasn't going to leave her alone to deal with things by herself. Everything was going to be okay… somehow. He couldn't tell her how because he didn't have the answer. He hadn't had an answer to the biggest problems presented to him in five years.

Sometimes though, just having that person there to let you know that they were there for you could help more than you could have ever expected.

"_Okay, you guys don't worry about getting off. Once Arsenal dives low enough, they can't track it any longer. It was made to house GW, so the conventional U.S. Military equipment isn't high-tech enough to track it yet. We've got a headstart until they put R&D on how to find their own weapon."_

No way. The people in charge of America from behind the scenes were smart enough to build a floating fortress before its time that was so ahead of everything else, it couldn't be tracked yet unless it surfaced?

It was almost too much to take in. After five years of dealing with the Patriots never making a single mistake, they had done so now.

"…What?" Naruto's brain almost cooked itself inside of his skull. It was a trap. It had to be. Or was it?

…No. It made complete sense. They would make Arsenal Gear to house GW, so why would they want just anyone with modern equipment to be able to find it after it set out, even by accident? They'd keep it staffed and would only make it surface when they needed to refresh the troops guarding the AI. There was no need for forced tracking to ever occur since GW would independently communicate with the Patriots what it was doing as it filtered the information from the internet and created their memes for them.

In practice, it wasn't ever supposed to be found after it launched unless GW disclosed its location to the Patriots. Solidus was never really supposed to get this far in regards to actually obtaining it. None of this had been accounted for.

So hearing Catherine basically insinuate that she controlled Arsenal Gear was quite the shock to the system.

"_Yeah, Emma controls Arsenal Gear now. Her virus shredded the GW AI that was supposed to control it, and Aniki uploaded me into the system… which put her into it too. Yay!"_

Naruto froze before letting out an almost maniacal chuckle that followed him all the way to the door of the server room. As it opened when he prepared to step outside he found himself staring down multiple cocked P90s from the remainder of the Arsenal Tengu that had surrounded the room during everything that had happened.

Putting his hands up defensively Naruto stared at them, dumbfounded at the circumstances he found himself in after seemingly surviving everything else that had transpired that day.

He considered that he could have taken them if he'd fallen back into the server room instead of in the corridor leading to it, but the place would have gotten torn apart in the fight and then Arsenal would have been screwed.

Aside from that, he was still under the yoke of the promise that he wouldn't kill any of them. Stopping P90 bullets from dozens of guns without backing it up with lethal force wasn't exactly something he was capable of. Maybe he could send a shot of arcing electricity to blow up the volatile parts of the firearms, but he didn't want to risk coming up with a new jutsu at a moment like this without testing it.

Naruto cleared his throat audibly and proceeded to speak in the best Russian he could, "_Prosto chtoby byt' yasno… ya ne ubival lyubogo iz vas segodnya (Just to be clear, I didn't kill ANY of you today),_" He said lamely.

"_Vniz (Down)_!"

"Fuck!" Naruto shouted in English, holding his hands behind his head and dropping to his knees, "Oi, I'll just say that if you shoot me my little sister'll make her new friend sink this thing with all of you in it."

"Stop!" Olga asked/demanded in their native tongue, walking up from behind and pulling Naruto back up to his feet. She sighed as she could see the P90s lower, but it was obvious from how they looked at each other that they were all confused as to why she was wearing the armor of the Cyborg Ninja. It was uncomfortable, but now that things were over she had to come clean with her men, "…I have something that I need to tell you all. Let him alone and you'll know everything."

'Oh man,' Naruto thought to himself, hearing the remorseful inflection in Olga's tone. This had the chance of ending very badly, 'You didn't have to come out. You could have put the visor back on and gotten away.'

They didn't have to know she had been the Cyborg Ninja, and she was about to tell them.

Olga moved close to Naruto and motioned for Raiden to come over in order to exit the server room safely, "Go… wait for me elsewhere," She said in English, "I'll find you when this is done."

"Olga…"

"I was prepared to lose them from the very beginning Uzumaki. They fought for me for years, they deserve to know that I betrayed them today."

"They'll kill you."

"Maybe."

Naruto almost moved to if nothing else kiss her on the cheek as a show of support, and maybe in case he never got the chance to actually try it before something bad happened, he decided that would be a bad omen. He'd try it later. There were too many reasons as to why it was a bad time at the moment.

He'd go somewhere else on Arsenal Gear and wait.

He'd always wait for her.

The Arsenal Tengu moved aside and let Naruto and Raiden walk through unmolested as Olga had requested. Both stuck close to each other, and Raiden kept his bloody sword out just in case it all started going down.

They safely reached the end of the corridor and exited, leaving them amongst themselves as they kept going to put more distance between themselves and the server room.

Raiden's eyes drifted over to Naruto and he simply decided to ask the question that was killing him. He'd seen Naruto's almost action just a moment prior, even if no one else had, "Those things you said earlier about trying to be with someone even if you know it's a stupid idea… you meant with Olga?"

It was extremely surprising. That was who he'd been talking about? They'd tried to kill each other repeatedly and when they hadn't been directly against each other they seemed to get along like oil and water a lot of the time.

"Yeah, basically," Naruto groused quietly, his worry showing on his face, "…I hate that damn woman. I have for years and I could spend an hour telling you why," He declared straightforwardly, "…I love that damn woman even more though… and I could spend another hour telling you why too."

XxX

(Twenty Minutes Later – Exterior of Arsenal Gear)

Snake, Meryl, and Johnny simply sat on the almost exposed body of the vast submersible vessel, staring at the ocean through the see-through 'epidermis' of Arsenal Gear until they saw Naruto and Raiden climb their way up to the surface as well.

Both of them seemed rather battle-worn from their respective conflicts, and neither of them said anything. On the way, they had worked out that Arsenal would circle Manhattan Island and give Raiden a place to get out so he could head back and try to meet with Rosemary. It was what he wanted to do. From there it would head out further to sea where Otacon could pick the rest of them up to leave before the heat came back upon them.

Emma would guide Arsenal Gear to Russia so that the Gurlukovich Mercenaries that had boarded would be able to leave. Despite Arsenal Gear's stealth capabilities, it wasn't the best place for loose ends like them to remain. From there the ship would be hidden, lost to the Patriots, and that would be where it remained.

"Are you sure I shouldn't come with you?" Raiden asked Snake. He'd offered to lend a hand to Philanthropy, but it was thought to be better for Raiden to get his own life in order and sort out his own things before diving back into danger. Putting something like that off would only be bad for him in the long run.

Between 'Jack the Ripper', the realization of what he had been built up to be for years by those in control, everything with Rosemary, and all of his other baggage Raiden would have his hands full for quite a little while.

The Patriots would leave him alone because he was useless to them and didn't know enough of their actual activities or how to expose any of them to threaten them. They'd used him and now he wasn't worth the effort of manipulating directly. He'd proven what they wanted for the most part.

"Kid, when life throws you a bone to do your own thing and live your life, you should take it," Snake said, pointing to himself and to everyone else around, "We don't really have that option. Don't think you have to do anything we're doing just because we're doing it. You don't have anything to prove to anyone, or anything to live up to."

For a victory party of sorts, it was a rather somber affair. Johnny and Meryl were prepared to flat-out leave the Gurlukovich Mercenaries from the moment they learned that Naruto was still alive. He was still their 'Boss' after all, and the things he'd done on that day had only reconfirmed that mindset after a few years absence, but that didn't make the feeling of being back out with the vultures circling them any nicer. At this point it was eight of them, with three being noncombatants, against who knew what was next.

And then there was Liquid Snake apparently taking over Revolver Ocelot's body at the prospect of fighting against Solid Snake… again. That was its own set of madness wrapped in a neat little bow of screwed up. Much to the consternation of everyone else present, Snake had chain-smoked the rest of his carry-on cigs over the fixation with that mess.

The butts of the spent sticks littered the surface of the mighty vessel around Snake's feet.

Before long however, as it might have been an hour, maybe two, a sole figure emerged from the tunnel ladder, climbing up and weakly standing up onto her feet as if she were spent, both physically and emotionally.

Olga had changed back into her commonplace fatigues, the Cyborg Ninja armor nowhere to be seen on her person as she slowly walked over to the others.

The least patient on what had occurred, having partially expected Olga to be strung up for revealing to a group of battle-hardened soldiers that she'd basically betrayed them, Meryl was the first to say anything, "What… what happened?"

"I told them…" Olga said, swaying on her feet weakly, "I told them everything I did, from the very beginning. I told them about the mission, about my role in today's events, about why I did it… and I told them that I was going to leave them because I didn't deserve their allegiance."

Snake cringed, though it was hidden by the attention of everyone else on Olga. An organization like hers was extremely close-knit. The people fighting beside you in a situation like theirs meant everything, and it had clearly been something that she'd taken deadly serious from their run-in on the tanker two years previously.

He couldn't imagine how such a thing as what had occurred today affected any of the parties involved; either Olga or the remainder of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries.

Naruto moved over to her and steadied her with hands on her shoulders, only to feel her reach up and grip his hands, "And? That's not all is it?" He wasn't asking. He knew there was more to it than that. She'd been prepared to lose them from the very beginning, and if it had been that simple she would have been able to hold her head up due to receiving what she'd expected. This was something different.

"…They told me that I'm still their commander," Olga whispered, trying in vain to hide the tears streaking down her face, "That even if I betrayed them, I did it for family… and that they were still my family too."

If she ever needed anything, they would be there. They understood why she would leave them, because there was always the chance that something like this would happen again. The Patriots still had Olga's daughter, and she could still be coerced into anything by virtue of that. Enough of them had died today because of machinations involving someone that they'd placed their faith and trust in.

It wasn't right for her to go on leading them when she knew full well that anything else could happen that would jeopardize the remainder of their lives.

They were going to go home, and she wasn't going to follow, but they had basically said that they would always be at her beck and call if she ever needed them for anything else. That cut her deeper than any words or actions of hatred from them ever could have. She hadn't hurt people that had been willing to hurt her back, she'd hurt people that forgave her regardless and insisted that she owed nothing to.

After she'd changed and gathered what little possessions she had, they all stood in line and saluted her on the way out. Every last one of them left.

As far as they were concerned she still had them. All of them.

Out there on the surface of Arsenal Gear as it began to surface to allow Otacon to land the helicopter that would whisk them away to escape, she couldn't hide the fact that she was crying. Naruto was more than willing to until she regained herself, however long that might have taken.

He hugged her close enough to disguise it for her sake, all the while enduring her blows against his body and her growling at him to let her go, communicating all different sorts of 'bastard' against him in every way that she knew how. There was no force behind them whatsoever, and the rumbling timber of the bite to her voice was to cover for a tone that would have been conveyed as weakness… as if it mattered.

She had him too. That much was abundantly clear by now.

XxX

(May 7th 2010 – Undisclosed Location in U.S. Alaska/Yukon Border – Naruto: Age 23)

After the Big Shell destructino and the Manhattan Incident drew to a close, America never learned just how close they came to life as they knew it ending in the country. James Johnson's death and the destruction of cleanup facility were credited to eco-terrorists inspired by the acts of Solid Snake and Naruto Uzumaki.

Not Naruto and Snake themselves, because they were dead of course.

They covered all of their tracks. Contrary to what he said, Solidus was forgotten as far as the news coverage went. His alias and his 'real' name George Sears never came up once. Neither did the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, neither did any of Dead Cell.

No real names were given to the public, and there were no images of the actual incident. The word given to the media was all they had to go on. Nothing about Arsenal Gear, or the Sons of Liberty threat or demands. Unlike Shadow Moses Island, this was almost effectively contained.

Almost, because Philanthropy still did their part to get the real story out, as much as they could through the internet.

The internet, for all of the woes it gave them, seemed to be their most effective weapon these days, more so than blades or bullets anyway. Damn computers.

After all… it was the only way they could seem to get their important intel these days.

In the dark of a large computer room, one small monitor was lit, shadowing the spiky-haired figure standing in front of it. Though it was unable to be seen in the almost nonexistent light, there was a scowl of displeasure firmly affixed on his whisker-marked mug as his foot silently tapped off of the floor, "What a waste of an op… fucking electric trails."

"_So?"_ The excited voice of his younger sister asked over the line between them,_ "How about it? You didn't plug your suit in and I can't see through the camera in your suit Aniki, it's too smudged."_

An exasperated sigh emanated from Naruto as he prompted the computer to shut down, leaving him in pitch darkness. All of that work getting in there for nothing, "Nothin'."

"_Nothing?"_

"Nothin' at all that we can actually use Kitten. It's a straight-up dead-end."

"_B-But the info from Arsenal Gear when your suit was jacked in! Emma, Hal, and me pulled it ourselves! How could it be wrong?"_

"It's not wrong really… just outdated."

"_By how long?"_

Naruto wasn't particularly sure how to sugarcoat the answer to that question, so he just came out with it, "Most of the last century. Eighty years plus Kitty."

A loud thump sounded out over the Codec, probably Catherine slamming her head down onto the desk she was more than likely sitting at for the duration of the mission. She was still only 21 after all, so she was allowed her bouts of immaturity at times. It wasn't like it mattered either. The mission was basically over.

Rubbing his eyes, Naruto walked almost casually out of the computer room only to be greeted by a figure dropping down behind him. Instead of reacting to the threat such a thing should have posed, he sighed and shook his head, "You're seriously driving the whole 'Cyborg Ninja' thing into the ground."

"Oh, shut up," Olga's clear, natural voice sounded out from within the Cyborg Ninja helmet and visor. She wore a new model with a darker gunmetal and red color combination, sleeker in how it wrapped around her body. There was no confusion with this model as to the fact that a woman resided within the armor.

It was best to destroy the original that she'd been presented with for the sake of the Big Shell mission as quickly as possible, but fortunately they had three people that were damnably good with mechanical design and/or computers. They were able to make a better version, suited for her personally based on data from Gray Fox and from Olga's last suit.

"I heard you over the line," Olga said, a twinge of annoyance in her voice, "Another dead end. How can these men be dead for 100 years and have their records transferred in such a way to remain in the system?"

It was a dummy setup. Even with the information they pulled from GW onboard Arsenal Gear, there were still hiccups. The AI had been heavily broken up by Emma's worm cluster, and what they were able to pull out of the system were bits and pieces really.

Still, missing something like that was a cold slap. Once again, the members of the Patriots showed themselves as ghosts in the behind-the-scenes workings of the United States in a very annoying way.

"I dunno, it's the 21st century." Naruto ventured to say, as if that explained everything. Olga forced her visor to become transparent simply so he could see her glaring at him, "What do you want me to say? The Twelve Wiseman's Committee lead was bullshit. That's all there is to it. We had to track it down this far to find out even that much."

This did nothing to improve her mood in the slightest.

Instead of agreeing or disagreeing verbally, Olga held up three fingers, "This is how old my daughter will be this year. It is also the number of years I've had to go without seeing or holding her in my arms once. If running into yet another brick wall doesn't just fill me with joy I'm sorry for that."

After leaving New York, steps had been taken to put as much distance between Olga and any means for the Patriots to reach her possible. Word of her daughter's well-being came from the Gurlukovich Mercenaries via several roundabout methods as they were still holding the young child to keep Olga in check. Not only her, but all of her allies.

Fortunately for her, her current running mates were extremely talented when it came to missions of a sensitive stealth-related variety. As long as they weren't seen and left no trace of their presence, they could continue to run missions allowing them to track down the whereabouts of the youngest Gurlukovich. They couldn't track Olga because the nanomachines in her body were only meant to respond to the original Cyborg Ninja suit, and that thing had long been scrapped.

Just as long as they weren't found on their missions against Patriot holdings. No fighting was allowed at all, and they were not to be seen under any circumstances. Nothing could be traced to them and their presences couldn't be noticed in any manner whatsoever. As long as Raiden remained alive, the child would not die due to their nanomachine link, but that didn't stop the Patriots from taking action directly should it ever become clear that Philanthropy had Olga and they were moving against them.

There was a bit of a chance that they could possibly get away since things weren't being protected by the U.S. Military, military affairs seemed to be switching more and more to the private sector. Since it was a business to them, if something went wrong but didn't cause a big enough mess to warrant word of what happened to go public, they wouldn't release a report to their clientele, including whatever dummy company the Patriots used to request the protection of the info they had tried to obtain.

Either way, there was nothing else that could be done there. It was time to leave and head back to the drawing board.

XxX

(The Next Day – Nightfall – Interior Alaskan Wilderness)

"So how was your date?" Otacon seemed far too excited about the return of the outgoing party of soldiers, especially since they had come back empty-handed information-wise once again. The fact that he was honestly interested in how Naruto and Olga had gotten along on the mission was sort of creepy.

They hadn't been the only ones dispatched. Sniper Wolf had gone along as a scout and to cover them and keep them informed on movement from the outside of the facility. Johnny was their extraction driver. Meryl was Wolf's close-range guard and the primary fighter in case things happened to where direct combat was needed.

It wasn't like they'd driven in the moonlight together or something. There hadn't even been any moonlight that night.

Naruto didn't rise to the 'date' remark in the slightest, simply leveling the most deadpan expression onto the perpetrator that he could, "Right. A date. Because when I think about romance, it always involves sneaking around military bases and digging through their electric files."

Otacon simply shrugged as he saw Naruto sit down on the front steps of their rustic temporary hideout, a place that Naruto knew well as it was where he'd spent the early portion of his time in this world. The home of the late Master Miller.

It was big enough for all of them to live in comfortably, it was out of the way, it was off the grid, it easy to watch out for enemies from and set up security measures around. It had all of the amenities that you could need when you were trying to stay out of sight and out of mind. For a short time before leaving they could make do with that place as their base.

Not for long of course, but it was as good a safe place as any to start planning their map moves.

"Well I think it's as close as you two are going to get to one," Otacon said with a friendly smile, sitting down next to Naruto on the front stoop, "After all, you can't exactly go out in public without heavily disguising yourself. You're supposed to be dead, and you were highly publicized when it happened."

He had been more chipper in attitude ever since reuniting with Sniper Wolf and his sister Emma. He might have been an accessory to a pair of 'dead terrorists', but as far as that went, life was good for him. It was nice that someone felt like they were coming out on top these days, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy in Otacon given the circumstances.

His romantic spirit had come back full-bore however, and for the past year it had been _extremely _annoying to the two people he'd been trying to drop it on; Naruto and Olga. The former more than the latter, because Olga wasn't above slugging him in the belly when he got too overbearing for her tastes.

"It's not that," Naruto said, glaring at the wilderness surrounding his old master's property that served as something of a blanket of darkness between them and the rest of the world for the time being, "What kind of slimeball do you think I am?"

"Huh?" Otacon was completely confused. What was slimy about showing someone that you cared about them?

"She's got Sunny to think about and focus on," Naruto explained, idly forming a Rasengan in his right hand, turning it on and off randomly. He could waste his chakra like that if he wanted to. It was his damn it, "Even if I could do something to take her mind off of what's going on, it's still screwed up to try. I don't have the right. That's what's important right now, getting the baby back. Not me trying to get Olga into bed."

Otacon sheepishly adjusted the glasses on his face, suddenly realizing that this method of thinking from Olga was probably what prompted her to hit him so hard when he started harping on it around her, "…Ahem, I see you've thought about this quite a bit."

"Of course I have," Naruto groused, "What else do I have to do between planning and running these stupid info raids and looking over our shoulders? There isn't that much."

The damn love-love crap could wait until there wasn't a cloud hanging over the woman's head the size of the one over Amegakure. There was a more pressing issue than the chance of getting Miss Olga as his legit lady, such as her missing daughter.

If he bedded her while she was in the state of mind prompted by the search for Sunny, it wouldn't have been what he wanted. Not with her. If it happened like this it would have been out of a sort of need that didn't propagate a healthy bond. Naruto didn't want her to get with him because she needed physical comfort that badly, he wanted her to do it because she actually cared enough to carry on a real relationship with him.

He was _never _going to say that out loud though, to anyone. That was too cheesy to voice aloud. Especially to Otacon. The man would jump all over that sort of thing and play it up as some sort of romantic sentiment. It was more of Naruto actually showing a touch of realism than anything else really.

The two men sat outside in the mild weather before Naruto felt a sharp kick at his lower back and turned around with a glare to see Meryl standing over him, hands on her hips. She didn't say anything, instead tilting her head behind her and upwards.

She only got a raise of Naruto's eyebrow in return, causing her to sigh, "Go upstairs to your damn room. You're needed."

For what? Snake was still out on a hunting sojourn, Catherine would have come herself if she needed him, Emma always went to Otacon for what she wanted, Meryl never asked for any help ever, and Johnny was… doing whatever it was that he did in his spare time, "Am I really?"

"Okay, let me rephrase that. What else are you doing right now that you can't go up there anyway?"

"Good point. Whatever."

With that 'logical' argument presented to him, Naruto hopped up and trotted inside of the house to go and see what the hubbub for him from Meryl was all about. It didn't really matter. Almost anything was better sitting around and talking about something so irritating.

Once Naruto left, Otacon simply continued to sit there in silence before finding the guts to speak up and say something, "Sniper Wolf's been listening from the roof this whole time hasn't she?" It wasn't a question. He already assumed as much. Nobody just came to get Naruto in-person. They always yelled for him.

"Of course," Meryl said with a small smirk, "She's been scanning the perimeter with her rifle all day up there. What else is there to do around here? There isn't that much."

XxX

Normally, Naruto knew full well when he was walking into some sort of trap. He at least had half an idea if nothing else and knew what to look for to prepare himself for something nasty around the way. Hallways with 90 degree turns and no way to see around the corner, canyon paths that bottlenecked steeply, things like that. There were signs that subtly put him on alert.

Those sorts of things didn't exist when you surrounded yourself with people that you trusted and cared dearly for, but they should have.

When Naruto made it to his room and saw Olga standing in the middle of the floor, arms crossed and glaring straight at the doorway his first instinct was to turn a direct about face and head back from whence he'd came, but he knew that would only make things worse.

He was going to completely and utterly punish Meryl somehow later though, and anyone else who had a hand in forcing him together alone with Olga. He had a feeling that out of the seven other denizens living there in the house, four of them were co-conspirators. It wasn't that hard to figure out who.

With nothing left to do but resign himself to his fate, Naruto walked into the room and shut the door to give them some semblance of privacy. Leaning against the closed portal he gave her a once over and sucked his teeth.

"Huh, so that's where my Army shirt got off to. I was looking for that," She was indeed wearing the grey Army shirt Naruto had possessed since basic training, as well as a pair of small black shorts, "Are you going to go work out or do you just like wearing my clothes?"

His attempt to change whatever the original subject was going to be failed miserably. She _was_ wearing his shirt though. She could keep it too, because she made it look way better than he ever did.

"You've been avoiding me," Olga started things off that simply in a cool tone of voice that seemed to have its own air of warning to it.

"Whoa-whoa-whoa," Naruto started, waving his hand in front of his face in order to get some things straight, "I haven't been avoiding you. If I'd been avoiding you, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now because _nobody_ would have been able to find me."

"You're a complete horse's ass," Olga deadpanned in return, her glare barely lessening on him, "You may not have been avoiding me directly, but I almost feel like this is the Dead Cell thing all over again. You're not avoiding me, but you're keeping your distance for whatever asinine reason."

"It's not asinine," Naruto reasoned, sitting down at his desk that had all of his weapons of choice spread out on top of it where he'd been cleaning and modding them, "I don't want you resenting me."

"More than I already do you mean?" She rebutted dryly.

"I'm being serious."

The bit of bite to his voice, prompted her to frown instead of maintaining her attempt to be angry. Naruto sat with his back to her as he began to strip his preferred pistol apart. Anything to keep his mind directly off of the conversation at hand.

He didn't elaborate any on what he'd just said to her, and that did nothing to fix either of their moods.

"Uzumaki, look at me," Olga sternly, eliciting a sigh from Naruto as he set the parts of his gun he'd been trying to clean down in order to turn and face her, "What the hell are you talking about, resenting you?" From the look on his face he was obviously considering the pros and cons of coming out with what he had to say, "Tell me."

In the end he decided that it didn't matter. As if there was anything he could say at this point that could possibly make Olga think any less of him. Her day-to-day opinion outside of battle was already pretty low.

"I trust you even though I know you're just as likely to put a bullet in my head as ask me what time it is," Naruto started to explain, despite the fact that a part of him thought that he could expect the former for what he was about to say, "The more time I spend around you, especially alone, the more I'll probably try to get with you."

"English isn't my first language. Clarify."

"I might try to hook up with you."

"Enough with the slang. What are you talking about?"

She wasn't the only one getting perturbed.

"I'm probably gonna try to get you to be with me, alright!? Romantically! Like in a relationship! Maybe even to fuck you if I think you're cool with that! I don't really know how else to say it subtly in a way you'll understand!"

Things turned out to be much more awkward than he'd originally anticipated this conversation to go. Fuck it. They were both adults, they had both had their share of carnal relations with other people in their time. It was out there now, so it was officially time to stop dancing around it. That was as blunt as he could possibly make things.

Instead of any sort of embarrassment or surprise, Olga merely palmed her forehead and paced around the room.

Naruto had his legs coiled to jump for an escape, just in case she was willing to make a lunge at him or something. She muttered to herself under her breath in Russian, and Naruto understood every word that was spoken loud enough for his very good ears to catch.

Eventually she came to a stop and faced him straight-up, "This is something you're just now wanting?"

"No… it's been for a while. Like, back before everything started spinning out of control."

"…And you couldn't have told me this three years ago before all of this started?"

Naruto hadn't been expecting that one at all, "Huh?"

Olga shook her head and turned to look out of the window with a wistful look on her face, "You are aware of the fact that pretty much every horrible thing that has happened to us probably wouldn't have happened at all had you never been blackmailed into separating from us and joining Dead Cell aren't you? I still blame myself for not putting my foot down on that by the way."

To his credit, Naruto was able to keep from taking offense to that. Almost. He still had to go up against it though, "There wasn't anything you could've done. I wouldn't have done it if I knew how things turned out now, but back then I figured I was as screwed as I was going to get and nobody would've stopped me."

"I mean it. I could have stopped you with three words."

"Bullshit. What three words?"

Deceived by how fast Olga was, even outside of her Cyborg Ninja suit, Naruto stiffened and froze as he felt Olga softly straddling his lap, arms around the back of his neck, "I need you," She said, planting a long, soft kiss on Naruto's forehead, "…I still do by the way."

She then proceeded to get up and audibly slap him while he had still been stunned by her admission. He'd barely even registered that he'd been hit other than the turning of his head and the burning red handprint rapidly forming and fading on his face.

Her fingertips gently traced the bruise that she'd just created before removing her hand and leaving him where he sat.

"I meant that," Olga said just before departing the room, lingering at the door to look back at the blond one last time, "The only thing you could do now to get me to resent you is something you've already done before. So don't avoid me again. It hurt the first time, it would have hurt even more this time, and I don't need that right now."

Having spoken her parting words, she shut the door and left Naruto with a state of mind that had been devastated via precision emotional airstrike. That one hit hard. That one hit harder than anything else that had been thrown his way in a long time, and he was year removed from personally exterminating the majority of his old unit.

At times like this, his thoughts drifted back to the odd ghost named 'The Sorrow' that he had seen twice, once before ever appearing in this world and once before waking up to be experimented on by Dr. Clark.

He remembered being told that he would experience much hardship. Man, had that been the understatement of the decade. But then the ghost had also said that he would be watching him.

"Well I hope you're at least getting a hell of a show ya jerk," Naruto said to The Sorrow, flipping off the sky behind the ceiling before rubbing at the soreness of his face and the fact that Olga had managed to 'stimulate' him physically, "Kami, I've got to be sick to be in love with that kind of a woman."

He swore he could hear a phantasmal laugh in his ears that sent a chill down his spine at the thought. He still despised the thought of spirits amongst them, _**"I was too…" **_The Sorrow's voice glided through his head, almost like a whisper, as if it were never even there.

…Fucking ghosts.

* * *

><p><strong>So it's done. The Big Shell arc is complete, and I know it took a while, but I had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch without the notes I'd taken on the story, so I had to manufacture things from memory of what I wanted and a reinterpretation of what I'd already written. It was incredibly annoying, but that doesn't matter.<strong>

**So for those of you MGS savvy you can tell what I've done and how that would affect certain things, so let's see what I can do with that in the coming chapters. Next arc will be the rise of the War Economy and the ordeals undertaken to save Olga's daughter. **

**Now I'm going to try and get some more writing done elsewhere while I'm on something of a roll. I hope you enjoyed. Later guys.**

**Kenchi out.**


	31. Reverie of the Weary

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. If it doesn't exist already, there should be a Metal Gear fan video made to the song "Man In the Box" by Alice in Chains. Why, you may ask? To that I reply, 'Why not?'

**Chapter 31: Reverie of the Weary**

* * *

><p>(Late July 2010 – Focsani, Romania)<p>

"This isn't cool Meryl," Johnny said in a nervous sing-song voice as they walked the night streets of the Eastern European town. He was 'unmasked' as it were so that the two of them could walk around inconspicuously.

"It's fine," The redhead assured her partner (why was it always her that ended up as his partner? Naruto got his kicks in the weirdest ways), "Out of our gear we look just like tourists, so nobody that would care who we really are knows why we're here."

There was little military presence in the area, but it did exist. After the events of Big Shell there was a lot of focus put on privatized military. Even some towns had contracts with the budding mercenary units. In that sense, Olga had already placed her foot in the door so to speak, as she still existed as the leader of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries and still had control over them even as she worked away from them.

In that sense, she already had one of the biggest military companies in the world, and with the growth of privatized military, this was something they could take on for themselves that Olga simply could not miss out on. With the help of Otacon, Emma, and Catherine she was quickly working to make them legal so that they could actually do more than take dirty wetwork jobs and take on newer recruits in bigger numbers.

The world was changing, and it was starting to get strange.

Well… strange_r_ anyway.

The idea of combat and warfare was slowly starting to become more popular. Fighting for profit seemed to be getting more acceptable as an avenue for employment. People will teach you how to fire guns and put you into those situations that you play in video games and see in movies all the time? I can be just like my favorite action hero, AND they'll pay me? That was the line of thinking for those who endeavored to get involved.

Mercenary work was beginning to be for more than just former soldiers looking to make a living with what they knew. Now damned newbies were beginning to get the traction to break into it.

Thinking about it riled Meryl up. She'd had a hell of a time getting her own feet wet, fighting for her own place as a soldier and now there was the equivalent of an express lane. But that wasn't important at the moment. There was business afoot, "Alright, so we need to find the Paradise Lost Army. How are we supposed to find these guys?"

"I don't think we have to worry about that."

Johnny's warning alerted her to the fact that as they walked the streets through the regular populace, three men dressed in leather coats and black berets were getting closer. He clutched his jacket closed and gulped nervously.

Meryl cursed inwardly. Otacon had rigged together a little something that let them both smuggle one small handgun and one extra magazine past airport security just in case it was needed before she could obtain equipment in Romania. She didn't think she'd get into a situation where she'd need them so soon.

Before a fight could break out, one of the three men got close enough to whisper to them in English, "Come with us. _Matka Pluku_ has been expecting you and yours."

Meryl and Johnny both looked at each other, both knowing enough about Romanian to know what that meant. The alleged, rumored leader of the Paradise Lost Army, 'Big Mama.'

XxX

(Interior Alaskan Wilderness – Master Miller's House/Temporary Hideout – Naruto: Age 23)

Naruto had woken up all of ten minutes ago with a ringing in his head. He hadn't even managed to get a shirt on during the course of the conversation with his comrades out abroad. All he could do was sit slouched in a desk chair and listen to what they were relaying to him from the group they'd found in Europe.

It was too early in the morning for this crap. Much too early.

"That's a complete load," Naruto said, receiving the intelligence from his two same-aged allies via his Codec implant. Needless to say, what he'd been told didn't resonate with him in any positive sense, "Yeah, that's where the kid is alright. I'm so sure. You go back and tell that old bitch that she can take that bunk info AND her bullshit mission and-."

"_It's legit Naruto. Calm down,"_ Naruto heard from Meryl's voice over the comm. line, _"Big Mama says she won't tell you where it is though without hearing it from you yourself and Snake that you'll do what she asks afterwards. No matter what it is."_

"You tell her that just in case she feels like trying to fuck us on this, the last person who blackmailed me is sitting at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Manhattan," Naruto growled, not feeling up for anyone else's cryptic crap.

"_She… kind of knows about that already,"_ Johnny said sheepishly.

What? Nobody knew about that. The Patriots, whoever those fuckers were, were the only ones who knew that hadn't been at Big Shell when things had gone down.

"_She's dead serious Naruto,"_ Meryl said again, getting the conversation back on track, _"One of the things she wants is to meet Snake in person after we're done. The other thing she'll tell him in person when she sees him. She has what we need to make a real move, but she wants your word before she gives us the information."_

"Why does my word mean anything?" Naruto wondered to himself aloud. This involved Snake, and making a decision involving the man without actually saying anything to him about it was a great way to piss the grizzled soldier off. While that was fun to do from time-to-time, giving him an actual excuse to be upset wasn't on the docket of things to do.

"Because you don't lie."

Naruto turned his head to the entrance of his room to see Olga leaning against his closed door, arms crossed over her chest, "Eavesdropping babe? Really? You can't even hear half of the conversation."

Olga let out a huff at the 'babe' remark and walked into the room to stand next to him, continuing with the point that she'd entered on, "I don't need to in order to answer your question, of why your word means anything. You keep your word, no matter how difficult the task is to accomplish, no matter how convenient it would be for you to go against your own promises."

"…And that's why you love me?" Naruto said, trying to razz her, as he had no idea where she was going with her whole explanation.

Olga huffed and flicked him on the ear, "Actually it's given me no end of grief over the last five years, but don't ever change that part of yourself. There's something comforting knowing that at least one person in your life will never have a hidden agenda or turn their back on you."

'I wish you'd turn your back on me,' Naruto thought to himself idly as he rubbed his sore ear, 'I'd totally take you and-, oh Kami, what the hell is wrong with me?' "Right. But still, what about Snake? He probably isn't going to be too happy about going to meet Big Mama after we're done with this."

"Too bad," Olga said, "If he has a problem with it I don't think she'll have much of a problem with us knocking him unconscious and waking him up for a meeting with her," When she didn't hear anything she looked down at Naruto giving her an incredulous look, "That was a joke."

Naruto gave her a look and shook his head, "I'd stick to vindictive sarcasm for jokes if I were you," With that, Naruto spoke up over the line to his comrades waiting in Romania, "Okay, tell her she's got a deal. We'll work out the particulars with Snake here and talk about it later. You guys just enjoy your vacation. We'll do the heavy lifting on this one."

"_Right-o Boss,"_ Johnny said, getting an audible groan out of Meryl for how lame he sounded, _"We'll keep in touch to send the intel after we hear back from Big Mama."_

"_Oh wow, a vacation in Romania…"_ Meryl said in a dry tone of voice, "_…Woooo, you're so generous."_

"Shove it up your ass and just take the time off firecrotch," Naruto droned, "I haven't had real time off in five years. I wouldn't give a damn if it was Romania or the surface of the goddamn moon."

All they had to do was say that Philanthropy was in to the Paradise Lost Army, get the information they needed to get Olga's kid back and give it to their main party, and then sit around until Olga had the kid in her arms so they could tell Big Mama that they were ready to meet up with her themselves. They literally didn't have to do anything else for however long that took.

No shooting. No running. No driving getaway cars or choppers. No Metal Gears. Nothing. All they had to do was sit and chill.

Meryl had focused in on the wrong part of the conversation,_"...If you weren't thousands of miles away I honestly might have taken a shot at you for that."_

"I wish you would," Naruto said with a laugh, "I'm pent-up as hell in this place. Getting shot would probably make me feel better," He then realized who he was sitting near and slowly looked Olga's way.

"…What?" Olga said with a smirk, "Would you like for me to get my gun?"

Naruto audibly sucked his teeth before speaking to Meryl and Johnny once more, "Alright, be safe guys."

"_Later Boss/Bye Naruto."_

Shutting off the feed to his inner ear, Naruto sighed and leaned back in his wooden chair, holding his forearm over his eyes, "So now we just wait. Then we start making a plan to get your kid. Then we go and get your kid. Then you crack a fucking smile for once in your life."

Olga casually moved to Naruto's front and straddled his lap, continuing to speak as casually as discussing the weather, "That sounds wonderful," She said, garnering a grunt of acknowledgment from Naruto, "…For your opinion, I do smile."

Naruto moved his forearm away from his eyes to look at the silver-haired soldier, "I've never seen you smile. I've seen you smirk. You do that a lot. Never a smile though. There's a difference."

Letting out a vague sound, Olga ran her hands through Naruto's hair as he looked up at her, "There haven't been very many reasons to. Perhaps one day soon you'll see it?"

It was a nice thought. Naruto would have liked that, to see her smile honestly, to actually be happy about something happening to her again. It had been a while since anyone had anything legitimate to feel joy over. It didn't change the fact that one thing was happening that probably shouldn't have been.

"You should probably get off," Naruto half-heartedly warned her.

Olga raised an eyebrow but didn't cease what she was doing, either sitting on him or messing with his hair, "And why is that?" She liked being so close to someone that she knew was as dangerous as he was, even unarmed, because she knew that he wouldn't hurt her or anyone he considered a friend. She meant what she'd said about trusting him, and it made her feel safe to think that someone like him was around.

With a sigh, Naruto rested his hands on Olga's waist and ran his thumbs across her stomach underneath her top, "Because I'm not sure if I'm above carrying you off and doing _unspeakable_ stuff to you."

He'd been outright crude on purpose, figuring she'd get up and curse him out. He half expected her to punch him in the nose. But she didn't budge. She seemed just fine where she was.

"Really now?"

"I haven't had sex in four years."

There hadn't been a whole lot of time to find a willing partner, what with all of the blackmail, the killin', the dyin', the stark truths about the world and oneself, the complete forced ostracization from everyone he knew and loved, and all of the physical and mental trauma. Needless to say, Naruto's dance card had been booked full for quite some time.

"Just over three for me," Olga revealed to him, though after doing the math it wasn't that difficult to pick up if you knew enough, "I always imagined that when it came to the man I wound up having a child with I would have felt something for him. But no, nothing."

Naruto sat and listened, continuing to let Olga do as she wished with his hair. It was normally a mess anyway, so what did it matter to him? What was important was what she was saying to him. They were all alone. By now he'd noticed the only time she had any extended conversations that didn't involve work usually involved her speaking with him. She spoke candidly to him.

She seemed to be studying his face closely, as if she were looking for something, "…Would you like to know something? I really want to tell you, but it sounds so weak to say," Olga said quietly.

There was nothing that woman could say to him that he would ever take as a show of weakness from her, "No such thing. Say it."

Closing her eyes, Olga leaned forward until her forehead was pressed against Naruto's, allowing her to whisper to him, "My greatest wish, of impossible things that can never be be reality, is that you were Sunny's father."

And just like that, Naruto couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. How was he supposed to respond to that, from _her_?

"Do you remember when you still worked for Dead Cell, when we met in the Kuril Islands? Your clone helped me with an assignment," She continued, "Had you been there in person, you probably would have been."

It took Naruto a few seconds to find his voice, "…Are you saying you were gonna-?"

"-Yes. I would have. One way or another, you would have never wanted to leave again. I promise you that," Olga answered the unfinished question, "Then you would have been there. I know you would have. No matter what it would have taken or who you would have angered in the process. And none of this would have ever happened. They would not have gotten past you to take her. But I was… upset, when you left without meeting me in person."

From that point one thing led to another, and she found temporary company with whom she did not take precautions. Thus everything became as it was, and no one could change a bit of it.

Nor could this be changed; where they were, what they were doing, what they wanted to do… what it seemed like they were going to do.

"Olga… it's not the time for this," And that physically hurt Naruto to say. Really, it did.

"You said yourself, for now all we can do is wait," She said, "I want something from you in the meantime. Something overdue."

"What do you want?"

"Two things. First, the truth," She said, confusing Naruto with her words. He'd never lied to her, "I want you to tell me that you love me."

The lump in Naruto's throat was almost too large to swallow down to allow him to speak, "…And the second thing?"

"Then I want you to make me believe it."

There was something to be said for having poise, restraint, and a sense of patience when it came to things of this nature. There was a time and a place for making a move and it when it wasn't present, when the time wasn't right, that was that.

Then there was the reality that something you wanted was literally sitting in your lap, and life had been hammering you with body shots for years.

The reality that you had to take what you wanted when it was within reach, because the following day may have very well taken it away from you for good.

To hell with restraint and patience. He didn't care anymore. The chances of one of them getting shot out of the blue between one day and the next was the same as a regular person finding a dollar bill on the street.

Naruto reached up, putting one hand behind Olga's neck before slowly pulling her in for a kiss. She didn't fight it, and even if she had, he wouldn't have cared if she'd tried to kill him afterwards. He half expected it regardless to be quite honest. Black widow style.

Olga melted into the kiss, pressing her entire body tightly against his. It was such a simple thing, and it couldn't have lasted any longer than half a minute, but to the two of them it didn't matter. It was a reprieve. A moment of peace and quiet. For just thirty seconds, it didn't matter if anyone was coming to kill them or not. For just thirty seconds, the scramble to find Olga's daughter could wait. For thirty seconds, it didn't matter where the Patriots were, or what they were coming up with next.

For thirty seconds, things were as perfect as they could have been at the time.

Even if it was just for a little while, Naruto could make Olga think of something else. Something better.

The two slowly broke away, and Olga sighed contently as she pulled Naruto's head against her neck and chest as he lavished her with kisses, "There is a bed, right there you know."

"Not yet," Naruto said, finding it harder to hold off than he previously did, only because she just _had_ to point out the obvious. He quickly occupied himself with snaking his hands underneath her top. She didn't even try to stop him.

"I hope you don't expect me to do something with you later as a reward for services rendered," The silver-haired woman told him, grinning as she leaned her body into the attention he was giving her. She would have tempted him by saying that it was a one-time offer, but they both would have known that she'd have been lying if she had. Reaching behind his head, she grabbed his hair and pulled back to give her access to his lips again.

"I don't like playing when there's still work to do," Naruto reasoned right before he melded his tongue with Olga's once more. It was the best excuse he had to give her, and if it didn't do the job he would have given in and thrown her on the bed.

This one was significantly shorter than the last, as he had a point… damn him. Hearing it set her right back in the reality of their situation, but it was indeed called for. It was another mark in his favor with her that he was able to keep his eye on the ball of something that was important to her.

With regret, Olga broke the intimate contact and shared a half-lidded gaze with Naruto as she tried to wrap her head back around what needed to be done, "Where is my daughter Uzumaki?"

"Your old man was an ex-Russian colonel right?" Olga nodded, wondering where this was going, "…So have you ever heard of Area 51?" Her eyes popped open in surprise as she pushed back away from Naruto to get a better look at his face, "Yeah, that's the right reaction to that."

"Fuck," Olga cursed under her breath. She was hoping that he had been messing with her. She didn't even know that such a place was real, figuring that it was just a legend that sprang out of the budding science fiction culture of the 1950s and 60s.

Well yes, it was real. As unfortunate as it was for all of them. There probably wasn't a more effective way to throw cold water all over the moment.

XxX

(With Snake – Ontario, Canada – Niagara Falls)

Snake oftentimes didn't have personal business. Very rarely did he let himself get attached enough to anything where this could occur. Different women had tried and had come fairly close through the years, but never quite made it through to him. He could say with confidence that it was probably him. He was just built that way.

Literally. He was more than likely built that way. He wouldn't have put it past whoever had cloned him, and he wouldn't have put it past whoever had raised him. He was only intended for one thing, to fight, as a contingency plan to handle Big Boss, and he'd accomplished that years ago. He was a purposeless tool that The Patriots no longer had a use for, and had long since lost the ability to really control.

Perhaps that was why he felt that he had something of a kindred spirit in another more recent addition to that classification? Only this one, instead of dwelling and trying to deal with The Patriots to stop their influence was trying to live his life. Compared to those living in the past enough to try and fight them, it was actually pretty commendable for him to try and get past it.

Snake couldn't just go places any longer. None of his allies really could. Not without going to great lengths to cover their tracks and move off of the grid. That was why he appreciated the discretion when it came to the agreed upon meeting place that Raiden had given him back when he had been contacted by the former child soldier.

To keep him from going somewhere close to where Philanthropy's main hiding place was where there was a risk of Raiden being followed, Snake had been requested to meet him in the province of Ontario, quite a ways away, and technically out of The Patriots sphere of influence due to being Canadian soil. But he knew much better than that. He still had to be very careful. Though it wasn't the United States, where they were was a stone's throw away from the state of New York. Agents could pull something shady and head back across the border.

He thought that Raiden was too good to allow something like that to happen, but even so it was a good idea to keep his head on a swivel, lest he lose it.

The choice of venue for their talk was again interesting. The biggest tourist destination in the province. There would be many people there, so if something happened there would be a ton of witnesses, and with the sound of the falls, there would be a lot of noise cover for them to speak candidly.

Fortunately, a man with hair as white as snow was extremely easy to find as well, which made meeting up rather simple. Snake knew he looked mostly the same, though his hair was greying quicker than a man

"Good to see you, Jack," Snake greeted, leaning against the railing in-sight of the water. Raiden had already been present, staring at the white waves himself as he waited, "Kept you waiting, huh? But it's been a hell of a year, hasn't it?"

A humorless laugh came from the faux-FOXHOUND operative in return, "You could say that," That was one way to put how his year had gone since the conclusion of the episode in New York. Part of him wished that things could go back to the way things were before that mission, "I didn't call you here for small talk or to catch up though."

"Fair enough," It was just as well. Neither of them were particularly the conversational type. Snake was just too much of a cranky old soul for niceties, and Raiden was pretty socially awkward when he was in good spirits. He certainly didn't seem to be at the moment, and now that Snake was able to take a good, hard look at him, he looked rather rough, "You look awful."

His eyes were red, his facial hair was unkempt. Just where had he been staying? There was no way his girlfriend would let him do whatever he'd been doing to himself to let himself wind up that way.

Raiden didn't even bother offering a rebuttal. He didn't have the spirit for it anymore, "Snake, whatever you're doing next, I want in," He requested without pretense, "I can't… I can't do this anymore. Can't be with her, with Rose. It's not-, I'm not that kind of man. All I can do is fight."

He sounded so pathetic, and really, there was something there that Snake could understand. Life was complex. The logic and reasoning behind why people were sent off to fight were maddening. But even so, there was a barbaric simplicity to the way things were on the battlefield. There wasn't much that you needed to understand past the facts of what you needed to do to survive and win.

Still, this wasn't a man that had any business trying to throw himself into some suicidal campaign against a shadowy organization with reach all over the world. Raiden had more important things to do than find himself a battle to fight.

"Not a chance," Snake said bluntly, taking a breath from the cigarette dangling from his mouth, "You've got a kid. If you don't think you can live for yourself, who cares? If you think the way you live is horrible, that makes it your job to make sure your child doesn't have to deal with anything like it."

"Rose miscarried."

Snake dropped the cigarette from his hand into the water below. He said that as if it were supposed to be an excuse for running out to fight some more. Quite the opposite actually, "So you _left_?" Raiden said nothing, Snake growled at him in return, "Go. Home."

"I have no home," The deadness of his tone could have strangled a troupe of circus clowns, "I'm not some normal guy who was meant to live the dream; a wife and a kid, a house somewhere nice. It wasn't working to begin with. The only thing patching it all together was the chance that I could keep it all straight for the child."

Like hell Snake was going to let this excuse for a soldier do any kind of work as sensitive as what they were doing. Raiden was better than this. Way better. But his head wasn't on straight. That much was clear. There wasn't any place in the operation for someone who would just as soon throw themselves into the maw of Cerberus as find a way to sneak into Hades unseen.

"I told you already, this doesn't have to be who you are," Snake insisted. Raiden needed some time on the bench so to speak, to get his head together straight, "The only way this becomes who you are is if that's what you allow."

Aside from the obvious problems he still had from his child soldier days that the nanomachines were no longer suppressing, the malfunction that aforementioned nanomachines had gone through in his head had messed with him more than he had let on. It showed. He needed to step back and take stock of what he had and what he one day could have. It wasn't healthy, to throw yourself back into the very thing that had warped who you were as a person to begin with.

"Do you really believe that Snake?" Raiden asked, an unconvinced look on his face. He clearly wasn't buying what Snake was selling, "You say I don't have to be this way, but what about you? You're a man aren't you? Not a weapon, not a killer. You don't have to fight either," From what he'd seen, Naruto was more than capable, and more importantly willing, to fight these battles if it got him a step closer to shutting the book on The Patriots' chapter in history once and for all. And still, Snake lingered, floating from conflict to conflict like a ghost. He didn't even seem to want it, "Or are you just the exception to your own rule all of a sudden?"

"You and I aren't the same."

"No, we're not. And I suppose you're going to say it's because of your genes that you were always going to be this way. That's bullshit," Raiden commented with a bitter laugh, "Unlike you, Big Boss actually had things he believed in, even if he turned out to be a criminal. That was why he fought. What are you fighting for now?"

A better future. He wanted to leave something other than the mess that the Earth was in that he had seen the rise of; human subjugation at the hands of digital forces and the megalomaniacs running them. But he didn't say that. Snake didn't feel the need to shoot back with anything.

Raiden was angry. If venting a little on him made the man feel better that was just fine. It wasn't worth getting riled up about.

"You're goddamn stupid Jack," Snake said, grabbing another cigarette and lighting it up, "Besides, if you want in, I'm not the one you should be speaking to. I'm not the leader," He took a measure of satisfaction that he was able to elicit some sort of reaction on Raiden's face. Before he'd been so down in the mouth, if someone had stabbed him he probably wouldn't have treated it any differently than if a sudden downpour had started, "Surprised? I guess Naruto really does top-notch work if you thought it was me the whole time running things."

"…You're kidding me," Raiden said, trying and failing to regain his previous composure, "He's the one that-? B-But, you're Solid Snake," Just based off of reputation alone, that by itself would have warranted that Snake was the centerpiece, the focal point of Philanthropy.

Snake found it within himself to let out an honest laugh at that 'logical' sense of reasoning, "And if New York Harbor didn't show you, I'm not very good at teamwork and large organization. I'm not much for the whole leadership thing. I'm more of a loner. That was the kid's show. He was directing traffic. I don't even think he knows how good he is at it."

How good was Naruto at it? Olga had her mercenaries making moves across the ocean according to things that she consulted with Naruto over.

He wasn't some genius mastermind, but he definitely wasn't some fool. Naruto had seen and dealt with more than enough to be fully aware of how to operate in a world that wanted his head. Out of the group he was the one of them with the balls, the initiative, and the ability to step up and direct traffic. He was merely determining the actions of the group based on what he already knew and what information he was getting from those working with him.

That was what leaders did. They didn't have all of the answers. They just had people who were able to get them enough of it to make as informed a decision as possible. Naruto didn't even know that he was doing anything remarkable. Everyone answered to him without question, and he hadn't drawn the conclusion that the buck stopped with him. Note that this was a 23-year-old young man doing all of this.

The truth of the matter was, Snake had subtly handed Naruto the operational reins ever since the mission in Sierra Leone that put them on to the happenings at the Big Shell. Even then, with nine of them as fugitives (three as noncombatants), out to take down the people in control of the 'free' world, he hadn't picked up on the fact that he was actually leading them all.

It wouldn't have surprised Snake if Olga had machinations on getting back to her men, dragging Naruto with her, and sticking him with a proxy leader position. His monkey wrench in The Patriots' plans at Big Shell had literally saved the majority of their lives, and had netted them a state-of-the-art stealth warship. A few would grumble, but considering everything else, they would accept it.

"I already said no," Snake continued, removing his cigarette to tap the ash off of the end of it, "If you talk to the kid the way you are right now, you're just going to hear it again from him. And he'll break your jaw if you try to get rowdy and press the issue."

Snake liked Raiden, and Naruto did as well. Honestly, he did. They were about the same age, and Naruto could relate to fighting battles while he was underage, though for the most part Naruto had a choice while Raiden hadn't. But in the end, Naruto didn't like him enough to put people at risk and throw their entire operation into whack just so Raiden could dwell in his state of sorrow.

Drawing himself away from the railing, Raiden slowly stepped backwards, staring down Snake as the legendary soldier returned his gaze. With nothing else to say between the two of them, Raiden turned around on his heel and began to leave, "I'm through with being told what to do Snake. Solidus... The Patriots... I even listened to you when you told me to go and live my life. Well you can't tell me what that entails, can you? I'll find my own way, and if that involves fighting... well."

"I understand," Snake said, "You do what you need to do Jack. I just hope whatever it is helps you feel well afterwards."

Raiden nodded and went his own way, heading off through the crowd until he eventually vanished amongst the people. Snake sincerely doubted that Raiden was going to do anything to actually face his problems inside. That man had too much anger, but that in of itself wasn't the problem.

XxX

(Interior Alaskan Wilderness)

Finishing her physical training for the day, Olga reentered the large rural home that served as the hideout for Philanthropy. Due to the lack of anyone spending any time in the living room, she figured that it must have been around the time where Naruto was taking his lessons on computer understanding. The thought of Naruto sitting in front of a screen fuming at his PC freezing up made her smile.

He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, even when he wasn't around. The entire reason he was drilling himself on as much computer info as possible was because he planned on going into perhaps the most technologically advanced base the United States had to offer in order to retrieve _her_ child.

Olga would be damned if he was going in there alone. She was coming with him, without question. But the fact that he was willing to, and was preparing for absolutely everything that might have come up before they headed in, taking things as gravely serious as possible… it resonated.

Hearing a gunshot from upstairs, Olga walked up to the upper loft portion of the living room to see Sniper Wolf lying down on the wooden balcony outside, the door to the outside wide open as her feet lingered inside, "You know, you're letting out all of the warm air."

The gorgeous sharpshooter fired another shot before looking back over her shoulder to see who was speaking to her, as if the accent weren't a giveaway, "I saw you while you were out on your run. You're starting late today, aren't you?" Normally by the time the sun was fully up, Olga had already seen to the conditioning portion of her training for the day, "I must say, you made a very attractive target."

***BANG!***

"-But don't worry. I was keeping a close eye out, just in case we've been found."

Oh thank goodness. Olga had heard the shots the entire time she had been running, and part of what Wolf had said sounded like a threat, probably all intentionally, but it rounded back for Wolf to say that she was still looking out for her, "I appreciate it. You know I always enjoyed knowing that I had the best sniper in the world looking out for me," She didn't need to see Wolf's face to know that she was grinning. She had quite the ego, and she did nothing to hide it, "What are you shooting at now?"

Wolf took another shot before answering, "Targets. Our host is such a dear. Every morning when he's out training, he sets them out for me around the house. They're never any farther than a mile, and they're always visible from the building… at least for me," She doubted anyone else could find all of them.

"I didn't know Naruto knew enough about sniping to set targets in places that you would find fun."

The Kurdish woman shrugged, "I personally taught him how to shoot a rifle… amongst _other things_," She continued with a saucy grin, "You might find out what else I taught him soon enough if you're feeling bold, dear," One day she was going to get Olga's composure to break somehow.

Olga didn't feel like saying that Naruto had basically taken a rain check on any adult activity. She seemed to be… rooting for the both of them. She always seemed to be. And Olga remembered that while Wolf had followed every order she had given in New York, she hadn't ordered her to work against Naruto. In addition, Wolf had been assisting Naruto throughout the day.

"What if one of us had killed the other at Big Shell?" Olga asked with a serious stare, "What would you have done in either case?"

It was one that Wolf didn't return, merely keeping her attention on lining up her next shot, "I would have supported the winner," She answered earnestly before taking another shot, "I have a stake in both of you. But neither of you killed the other. Quite the opposite now if my intuition is correct."

"Maybe so."

Ah, she wasn't denying it. There went that little avenue of fun, "So you and my little probie," Sniper Wolf said, chambering another round into her rifle with an audible cocking noise, "…I knew he liked older women."

Olga rolled her eyes. Older, hardly. She was two years Naruto's elder, if that, "Are you angry about it?" She felt the need to ask. Wolf had literally been Naruto's first. They had shared a physical relationship at one time. Maybe more as far as Olga knew, as she had never been one to pry into the affairs of her comrades. Lately, Wolf had taken over something of an overseer position when it came to keeping him out of trouble.

Wolf set her rifle to the side and sat up on the floor, turning to face Olga, "No," She said with a wide smile, "I always knew that I wouldn't ever be the one that could keep a hold on him. And I could always tell that you had a thing for him after I started working for you along with the others. You treated us better than you should have given the circumstances, especially Johnny. I'd like to think it's because of who asked you to look out for us."

"So is this the part where you warn me not to cause him pain?"

"No. He's no child, and neither are you. You both know what you're doing. Besides, I'm a few years too late for that," Wolf told her, collapsing the stand for her rifle as she began putting it away and picking up her spent shells, "You two have already caused one another pain, in whichever way you wish to measure it, more times than I can count."

Mentally, emotionally, and physically. Especially physically. One could not ever overlook the physical aspect of how much Naruto and Olga had hurt each other. That scar on her face existed for a reason, after all.

Standing up, Wolf saw Olga tracing the thin, diagonal line down her face that marked just how tumultuous her relationship with Naruto Uzumaki was. There was no sane relationship counselor who after hearing of the history between them would have ever condoned the two of them being in the same room as each other, let alone in a relationship.

Her gun fully packed up, and believing that she had left her former commander with quite a bit to think on, Wolf walked past only for Olga to set a hand on her shoulder as she did so, stopping her to say one last thing, "Then I guess that means we've already gotten it out of the way for later, no?"

Sniper Wolf's grin could have split her face as she took another step and went her own way, "Now that was the kind of answer I wanted," She whispered.

XxX

(With Naruto)

Much to his own consternation, Naruto had to admit that his chief Achilles' heel at the moment was a distinct lack of real know-how when it came to things of a digital nature. After everything that had happened with Big Shell, and the rogue A.I.s that had gone nuts after G.W. had been filled with more holes than swiss cheese by Emma's worm cluster, Catherine had insisted that he take some time to try and at least get some sort of technical understanding.

Two hours a day, he'd get the equivalent of a classroom experience from at least one of three high-level computer programmers. By the end of it, he felt as if all of the energy had been sucked out of his body. His eyes hurt, his fingers felt tense. How could people stand this? Otacon, Emma, and Catherine spent hours upon hours doing this stuff? No, doing stuff harder than this?

"I hate it," Naruto said at the end of one of these sessions, "I hate it so much," It just wasn't his scene. He was hands-on, and while it was nice and convenient to be able to point and click to get whatever you wanted, the nuts and bolts behind it were enough to drive him insane.

Otacon chuckled to himself while Catherine made no secret of laughing at the self-imposed misfortune of her 'brother', "Aniki, you _have_ to learn some of this. The world is becoming digital. Aside from you slowing down in the field when you ask us how to do things, or how something's supposed to work it's just embarrassing."

Naruto snorted indignantly. He knew that. It didn't make it any less annoying to deal with. And the fact that all of them taught him in different ways was even more so. Emma had very little patience for things she felt were easy, so he was rarely able to actually review anything that he didn't quite have down pat with her. Catherine knew how he was, so she took everything very slowly, refusing to move along in any one aspect until he had demonstrated that he'd mastered what she was going over.

It was Otacon who had best figured out how to teach Naruto. Since the other two actually focused on particulars, he used his sessions as a sort of free study. They started with a particular direction in mind, but Naruto's mind had a touch of the wanderlust. If something else came up that sent them off-track but intrigued him, Otacon allowed Naruto to explore it and helped him along with it. It turned out that he learned very quickly when it was something he had an interest it. Any blanks that this left in his development would be filled in whenever Emma and Catherine got around to it, and when they reached the subject that had caught Naruto's attention with Otacon they wouldn't need to spend any real time on it.

Was it lazy? Probably. Was it effective? It was turning out to be.

Naruto kicked himself away from the desk, trying to get as much space as possible from the desk containing the wretched terminal upon which he had been educated in the hard-knocks of advanced computer knowledge. Cursed thing. He was not above hissing at it if he had to get anywhere near it again for the rest of the week.

Naruto stopped himself against the wall with a bump, "Computers were stupid-simple where I come from. Nobody even used them. I kind of wish it was like that here," He said before taking a second to expand on that thought, "I kind of wish 'here' didn't have a lot of stuff that home didn't have. I could do without guns, and I haven't even heard of one going off before, but I could do without the cloud of a nuclear bomb going off hanging over my head every time a war starts."

"That sounds nice," Otacon responded honestly. From what he'd heard of the enigmatic Konoha that he had never found on a map and that Naruto never expanded upon, Naruto's home seemed a little too backwoodsy for him, but he made it sound peaceful, "A world without nuclear arms. Without guns. Without Metal Gears."

If this Konoha place was just make-believe, those things alone made it sound a lot better than what they lived in now.

"Kinda, but not really," Naruto said, not really keen on letting Otacon down, "Thinking back, me and people like me were probably the closest thing to Metal Gears that there were where I'm from," He remembered what Gaara had said about being a weapon, about them being the same. How much of that applied to him too? He'd never gotten those answers before he'd died, "People weren't supposed to be able to stop us, and if I remember, I think we could have destroyed whole towns in one move."

Or something like that. Gaara after releasing Shukaku was supposed to have been trump card that would have destroyed Konoha had he not been stopped in the forests outside of the village. Because Naruto had lived it, he was unable to comprehend just how outlandish everything he had just said happened to be.

Otacon was barely used to the concept of psychics and superhuman cyborg ninjas, only becoming so after being faced with them. To hear Naruto casually speak of human beings imbued with that much power elsewhere, as if he were discussing the wildlife outside, was terrifying, "That's impossible."

"Aniki can't lie," Catherine chimed in, her eyes glued to the dancing characters on the screen in front of her, "He's really bad at it."

Naruto's mouth opened in sudden realization. The only person with them that had ever seen him cut loose with the Kyuubi's chakra was Snake, and he was pretty sure Snake had gotten over it fairly quickly in exchange for the things trying to kill them whenever it had transpired, "I killed a bunch of RAYs in the hangar on Arsenal Gear. How do you think I did it?"

"That's just crazy though," Why would anyone do that? Then again, there were countless things he could ask that question about, "...I guess humankind will try and make a weapon out of anything."

"You're telling me," Naruto said with a soft grin, "I haven't... I haven't had time to really think about it in years," There hadn't been a chance to stop and dwell on anything about his home, if it could have even been called that any longer. He wondered what things were like there now. He had been gone for well over a decade.

Catherine turned around in her chair to take part in the conversation in earnest, "Are you ever going to go back?"

If he could have, he probably would have tried after Shadow Moses. There wasn't even a place to start, and the only connection was the ghost man that haunted his dreams once every blue moon. Even if there was a way back to Konoha, it had been ten years. There was nothing there for him now. He was a whole world away.

Naruto slid his chair over to Catherine and grabbed her in a hug that picked her up out of her chair and put her into his lap, "No way Kitten. Not with you still around to look out for. I've gotta make sure you find a nice guy that'll treat you right."

There was little chance of him reciprocating and Catherine knew it, but still, the universe had dropped an opportunity in her lap to hit Naruto with a veiled proposition, "_You're_ a nice guy that'll treat me right," She said, complete with a big grin and a batting of eyelashes, "And after listening to Wolf, I'm sure that you'd positively wreck-."

"I'm not into that," Naruto cut her off, speaking as if it were obvious why this shouldn't have been a theme, "I'm your brother."

"No you're not, I just treat you like it," Catherine deadpanned amid Otacon's snickering at what was an age-old conversation, "You were never even adopted."

"That's not even the point and you-, shut up Hal!" Naruto said, getting the technical genius to put his hands up defensively, still laughing at the blond ninja's expense. Losing that particular battle for his dignity, Naruto turned his attention back to Catherine, "I'll totally drop you on the floor."

"You're the one who picked me up!"

Times were quiet. It was something that most of them had almost forgotten how to savor ever since their worlds had turned onto their heads three years ago. Things wouldn't last that way. That was one thing they knew for certain. Not with The Patriots still running the U.S. from parts unknown. Not with Ocelot out and about, stuck with Liquid Snake's spirit periodically possessing him.

There was still work that needed to be done, and it started with picking up the last piece of blackmail that the Patriots had over their heads. The time for smiling and laughing would soon have to be put on hold. They could do as much of that as they wanted to only after Olga's daughter was safely retrieved.

* * *

><p><strong>Wow. A year. I...have no words. I guess I could say that time flies when you're busy, but I'm more than certain that no one here gives a crap about that, so I'm not going to get into it. Anyway, this is what's up.<strong>

**The feelings train has come and officially run over two more victims. The feelings train runs over everyone, regardless of how much stuff is piled on top of them already. You can't outrun the feelings train. There are no breaks, the conductor doesn't give a crap, and getting off of the tracks is never an option.**

**And I hate myself for writing that just now.**

**Next chapter, it's time to start getting someone's damn baby back, from a military base in the United States thought to be a myth until recently. Oh ch-yeah. Get you some.**

**Kenchi out.**


End file.
